


[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

by KillerGirlFuria



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aromantic Original Female Character, Do not steal via app either, Don't copy to another site, F/F, F/M, Gen, Isekai, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Original work - Freeform, Other, Otome Game, Poly Relationships, Polyamory, Polyandry, Reincarnated into Otome Game, Reincarnation, Reverse Harem, Smart protagonist, Soul transfer, Transmigration, Villainous Noble Girls, everybody is screaming, the MC is the worst enabler but her dumb ideas usually end in something good, y'know all those bad Otome Isekai cliches? yeah I hate them too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2020-04-07 09:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19081933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillerGirlFuria/pseuds/KillerGirlFuria
Summary: Mary dies. Mary is reborn. Mary becomes Adelia Henrietta Bellville, daughter of Archduke Bellville, a villainess of [Regalis: in search of Love!] and probably the most hated character in the otoge community from Mary’s time. But she’s fine—she read the novels. Many novels.But here's the thing; all she has to do to avoid her Bad End is to be a decent person. It's what comes after that makes her want to scream in frustration.Or: that typical Otome Isekai where everyone falls in love with the Villainess, except there’s a twist: MC is actually smart, and the characters surrounding her are more than one-dimensional props. And there's an underlying mystery in which her mother is involved that may or may not shake the known world to its core.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It's completely unbeta'd and stress-written when I was procrastinating instead of studying for literature exam. Please don't be too hard on it--it's a random side pet project, meant to be rather light-hearted with as simple plot as they get. Otiginal Otome Isekais as they can be found translated on novelupdates.com are, quite frankly, even worse than this. And they're the original stuff.

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

•prologue•

_Girl dies. Girl wakes up. Girl remembers._

•••

* * *

 

All she remembered was blaring lights and a loud, prolonged sound of the klaxon, then a sensation of something colliding with her body, and flying-

_God, if you exist, please don’t Isekai me. Especially into an Otome Game._

She was dead when she hit the asphalt

♦►☼◄♦

She wasn’t old enough to properly understand the words when she started having dreams. They felt vivid, like a memory, and she found herself startled at being able to understand them. Vaguely, somewhere in her mind, she knew that a one-year-old should not have the cognitive ability to do any of these.

Sometimes, her eyes would glaze over, remembering a dream-memory, and her mother would look at her with concern.

The maids thought she was weird. Too smart for her age, too aware, but at the same time too confused. Too creepy, wide-eyed and silently watching. All she knew was that maids were a very outdated concept. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her much, either.

She was five years old and she had been having dreams for four when her little sister was born—a tiny, wrinkled, angry-red creature with lungs so powerful that when she, used to peace and quiet, heard little Rosalie scream for the first time, she almost blacked out from shock.

She vaguely remembered hating those human larvae in the dream-memories. Rude, loud, ungrateful-

She loved her little sister. For some reason, the child was important but information obscure, still alluding her why exactly. But she suffered through the screams with nothing more but a very sour face.

She was six when she used magic for the first time. Rosalie was a devil, and she climbed a drawer and then lost balance. Nobody was quite close enough, and then something surged within her and then suddenly Rosalie was harmlessly floating to the floor.

That was wrong. Magic wasn’t real. It was just a fairytale-

Magic was a commonplace here.

Her waking world and her dream-memory world didn’t align at all. When she dreamed, she saw tall buildings made of glass and metal and metal vehicles that moved all on their own. Many, many people, enough to make her head dizzy, but everyone so lonely, so busy. When she woke, the life was slow, the fire used to light the dark, horse-drawn carriages and mansions in the middle of the forest. No metal machines flying in the sky, just birds. No choking gases in the air, just the flower fragrance.

The world she dreamt of was not the one she lived in at all.

When she was seven years old, her memories finally aligned and then, everything was clear.

Her name was Mary. She was twenty-seven years old, and she died.

Her name was Adelia Henrietta Belville. She was seven years old, and she was the most loathed villainess in the history of the otome games.

The realization hit her quite randomly as she was walking through the gardens. It was kind of like an electrical current coursing through her body, and for a moment she lost control over her limbs, and then she was falling face-first into the paved walkway-

Her mind didn’t quite hold, and the last thing she heard was her mother’s shout as blackness enveloped her, six years of remembering a life that she lived in the past, six years of dream-memories suddenly making sense all at once despite being incomplete yet, despite making no sense at all before.

She didn’t even feel herself hit the pavement.

♦►☼◄♦

Adelia Henrietta Bellville was a true beauty—the fairest in the land, easily, with her lilac hair and pink eyes, perfect skin and delicate, regal features. Her face was perfect, her body was perfect. She had an immaculate pedigree and great wealth behind her; and, on top of that, she was a dual elemental wielder, with one of her elements being of the super rare class. By all means, she was perfect.

But then, she was also the most hated character by the whole fanbase. Why? Because of her personality, of course—this was the woman who single-handedly brought down a family second only to the royalty, and completely ruined it because of her greed. Adelia was vain, greedy, deluded, egomaniacal and, quite possibly, psychopathic. She died in every gameplay. Every single time, and every time it was her fault, and she was also usually the reason for another war, so soon from the first one.

She was betrothed to the prince because she threw a tantrum until they agreed. She treated her brother worse than dirt. And she loathed the Heroine, regardless of who the girl pursued, due to her status as a commoner. In the Bad End, she killed the Heroine midpoint in the game. In the True End, she crippled her with the assassination attempt. In Good Ending, she did no harm only because she was killed before she could.

A loathsome existence hidden behind a pretty face.

This was who Mary was reborn as.

All that awaited her was destruction end as of now, but that was ten years into the future. The game she found herself in now, as per cliché novel trope, [Regalis: in search of Love!] was the new ‘in’ thing on the otoge market, especially western one. It had a relatively good story and lore, especially for a game of the genre, and the world it was set in was quite grim—war-torn and ravaged by plague and famine, a [Saint] would emerge, heal the land and cure people.

That [Saint] was, of course, the Heroine—Sally Higgins, a common girl wielding one of the rarest dual combinations of magic, [Light] and [Nature]. While training her abilities at the Regalis academy, she would catch the attention of one of the four capture targets and eventually, together, they would pull through the second war to break out and save the kingdom. The not chosen Capture Targets would also find happiness elsewhere, so it was a happy ending for everyone—

Except for Adelia, of course, and her whole house minus her stepbrother, a capture target. The only other person with truly bad ending would be prince’s younger sister, paralyzed from the waist down and insane from her confinement who would go openly murderous after the death of Adelia, the person with whom the princess was heavily implied to be in love with.

It was sad, the princess’ fate, actually. She fell from the tower and nearly died, her mother sacrificed her life to the gods so that she would even wake up, and then the person she admired the most was killed by some common girl. It was sad, really.

As for herself, all Adelia needed to do to avoid her bad end, to be honest, was not to be a psychotic, egomaniacal madwoman. Doing something about the princess, who was merely the victim of a circumstance, would be much harder, if possible at all.

As for other issues-

Oh.

Oh no.

The war. It would break out in a year from, if Adelia was seven right now, and would last good seven years. And the act of aggression between the Kingdom of Sheothia, where Adelia lived, and Forest Kingdom of Ifa Nalore, where elves lived. If she remembered the lore right, Ifa Nalore’s prince, Shelor Alytharion, was killed on Sheothia’s lands by humans and the elves went to the war for it. Due to war, famine and then plague would outbreak, and Rosalie, Adelia’s younger sister, would fall to the plague and Adelia’s parents, distraught and depressed, would allow their only remaining daughter to do anything and everything she pleased in fears of losing her too.

Rosalie was loud, annoying and climbed everywhere, but Adelia didn’t want her sister to die. If it were avoidable to begin with, she would do anything to avoid it. However, if Rosalie caught the plague, she was done for—she died aged seven, too young for her body to fight the disease, not because she was famished or lacked medical attendance. Bellville Archduchy was only really second to the Royal Family, they lacked nothing. Adelia’s only bet was preventing her sister from getting ill, to begin with.

As for the Capture Targets, Adelia would only have any real influence over her stepbrother, Elijah Dixon Bellville. Soon, his parents will die in a carriage crash, and he will be adopted by Adelia’s father. In the original game, she loathed and abused him, because she felt he was a threat to ‘rightfully hers’ Archduchess Title. It only got worse with Roselia’s death, and Elijah grew up hating Adelia more than anything. He would then gravitate towards the Heroine, who, too, was hated by Adelia, fuelled by the need to protect people from his deranged stepsister. He and Heroine would fall in love if his route was chosen, and he would eventually kill Adelia himself before she could do too much harm. It was his route in which it was the easiest to kill Adelia before she caused too much harm. As for his appearance, he had relatively dark, blue hair and grey-brown eyes. His magic was [Water].

Next, she would probably come into contact with was the prince, Alastair Matthias Sinclair. Originally, he hated Adelia because she kept throwing a fit until he was betrothed to her, and then began treating him like her property. His family situation also wasn’t great; paralyzed sister and dead mother, and his father melancholic and oppressive because of it. He easily falls for the kind and loving Heroine who showers him in unconditional affection and genuinely cares for his situation. Frankly, he falls in love first in his route and had to work to convince the Heroine they’re better off as more than friends, another score she had with him—she doesn’t approach him for his status or looks, she approaches him because he looks like he needed a friend. He had long, straight red hair and yellow eyes. He was a dual wielder of [Fire] and compound element [Lava], much like his father, the king.

It’s very much similar with the Knight character, Felix Galashiels. He’s the dark and broody type, but that’s later revealed to be because his parents both died in the aforementioned war, and he closed himself off to brood in peace. Heroine eventually breaks through his sadness and grief and shows him that attaching himself to others is not as scary as it seems, despite the fear of losing them. Adelia doesn’t play too big of a role there, except customary harassment of the lowborn heroine, and serves as a medium for Felix to protect the girl and bond with her more. He himself isn’t quite of the nobility and therefore had easy time bonding with the Heroine once he stops brooding. He had brown hair and green eyes, and his magic is [Earth]. It is said that he awakens the compound metal element in the Bad End due to the emotional shock.

Last but not least, Noah Isaac Cotynghin, a genius mage capable of using all four basic elements where people would, at most, wield two, a once-a-generation genius. He was powerful, intelligent and the farthest removed from Adelia. Frankly, he scorned Adelia, for she had quite powerful magic—[Wind] and [Lightning]—but never took time to cultivate any of them. ( _It was good she didn’t, from a game perspective, because then she would have become truly dangerous, though_.) He gravitated towards Heroine, a girl wielding powerful dual [Light] and [Nature] magic and deemed her his rival, and from then on they would try to outdo each other in scores. His route was a fun slapstick romance between a lively girl and a tsundere boy, and Adelia wouldn’t even come to play so often, until the very end where she would try to kill the Heroine, fed up with being ignored. Untrained, she would easily fall to Noah’s superior magic or even Heroine’s who put much more work into herself than in other routes. Actually, from the perspective of the world, Noah’s route was the best because the Heroine became her strongest incarnation and helped most people. It was the ‘true route’ if one would. He had silver hair and eyes.

It was kind of sad, though, that the game became so popular where it’s only real twist was that the Capture Targets were actually genuinely likable, respectful people. That should have been the rule, not an exception.

♦►☼◄♦

 She woke up with a start, half-drowned in the soft sheets of her bed. Her room was rather tasteful, all pretty lilacs and well-picked colors, nothing garish in sight. She was seven years old and filthy rich, but somewhere in her psyche, a part of Mary was always alive. Maybe that was why she was always a rather well-mannered if a creepy child.

Her cheek stung, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she scratched it on the pavement. Hopefully, it wouldn’t scar.

God doesn’t exist, she realized, vaguely remembering the sensation of flying and hitting the asphalt and silently asking to not to be put, exactly, into this specific situation.

First, however, she took stock of her surroundings and situation. She was seven. The game started in ten years, after that she would begin attending the Regalis Academy. Her father would soon adopt Elijah, the stepbrother capture target, whose parents died in a carriage crash, and not even a year after, a war would break out and with it, the famine and plague that would eventually claim Rosalie’s life five years from now. Sometime around that the princess would suffer a fall from the tower that will shatter her spine and soon after, her mother would sacrifice her life for her. Few years along the like, Adelia would throw a tantrum and force the betrothal between her and the prince after she saw him once and apparently fell in love.

Things were looking good for Adelia. If she didn’t abuse her brother, he wouldn’t hate her. If she didn’t throw a tantrum and actively seek betrothal with the prince, he would be left well alone. And if she ignored the Heroine, or maybe even were nice to her, no Destruction End would await her at all!

As long as she behaved like a civilized person, she would be perfectly fine. She liked that prospect, it let her focus on much more pressing issues; how to avoid her sister’s death, for starters. And maybe help the princess if she was at it, if at all possible.

Somehow.

She didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because her mother as if guided by some sort of sixth sense, burst into her room shortly after Adelia woke. Penelope was her name, and she was a beautiful woman—and something about her beauty was inhuman, but Adelia couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Penelope had long, soft, wavy pink hair and pink eyes, which Adelia inherited. ( _Where her purple hair came from was anyone’s guess; Penelope’s mother, supposedly_.) Penelope was tall with a well-defined body and sharp, regal features. She was beautiful, in carnation-pink dress and summer flowers in her hair. She was the one to put them in there, so she couldn’t have been out for long.

“Adetta, love, are you well?” her mother asked, and Adetta nodded. It was her nickname, made from mashing her two names and used only by family. In-game Adelia didn’t use it, and the lore stated that she stopped somewhere after her sister’s death.

“Adetta!” her father, Crawforde, came rushing in with Rosalie in his arms. He was a very handsome, man, tall and quite princely, with soft, blonde hair and eyes that were somewhere between blue and green. Rosalie had his hair and mother’s eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry for worrying you,” she says and it’s sincere, because they’re her family now, after all. “I think I spent too much time in the sun.”

It was a convenient coverup since today was a particularly sunny, warm day, and Adetta had a rather strong preference towards wearing dark colors—as in, she would never wear anything else. It was stupid, she knew, but the dark color and simple design made her look more mature. And, which might or might not have been secretly her goal, creepier.

“It’s quite alright, love,” her mother said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But I think the cause might have been a bit different. When we came to get you, you were very… Electrized.”

Adetta blinked up at her. “Electrized?”

“We think that you might have awoken a secondary element and that it is [Lightning],” her father said, coming closer. “It sometimes happens like this.”

“Ah,” is the only thing Adetta can really say. “That’s good, yes?”

It was good. Adelia originally, in the game lore, awoke to her secondary element five years from now, due to emotional shock caused by Rosalie’s death. But Rosalie was alive, two and healthy and not seven and dying, and Adetta was seven and dual-natured. Was it connected to her memories finally making sense? Most likely. But it wasn’t like she was complaining.

Or that she was like Adelia. She had power, significant power, and mana pool. It would be a waste to leave it to fester.

“Father, could I bother you for a tutor sometime next year?” she asks, mind made up. “If my magic really is [Lightning], then its rarity is second only to [Darkness], and it would be a waste to leave it untrained.”

“Indeed,” Crawforde says with a smile. He looks all too happy with himself-

Oh. Oooooh.

He, too, was a dual [Wind]-[Lightning] user. She kind-of forgot. Well, now he can easily rub the fact into the face of anyone who so much as dares to bring up Adetta’s paternity into question, especially since she looks little like him. In turn, Penelope had [Nature] magic, and so did Rosalie, judging by how flowers behaved around her. To be using magic at the age of two, conscious or not, her magic was very strong already.

There were three categories of magic. Basic four, [Fire], [Water], [Wind] and [Earth], then the rare trio—[Light], [Lightning] and the very rare [Darkness] and then the compound magic that was technically an amalgamation of basic four, but didn’t require them to work; [Lava], a staple of Royal Family, [Ice], [Nature], [Metal] and the exotic [Sand] had by people from the far south.

As much as most elements were directly hereditary, maybe skipping one generation, but even that rarely, [Light] couldn’t be called anything other than a chaotic bastard, skipping generations on end, surfacing where it never was before and then vanishing with no trace.

A triple wield of [Light], [Nature] and [Water] was an extremely rare thing, but boasted borderline ridiculous regenerative prowess. It was a person like that who was called [Saint]—however, the Heroine lacked the [Water] magic. Despite that, in times of dire need, even dual wields lacking [Water] or [Nature] would be accepted as the [Saint] due to their already significant healing capability. The game developers have mentioned that a triple-wielding [True Saint] was born in the time of the game, and died during the war, but they refused to elaborate anything over that.

“We could get you a tutor right away-“ Penelope says, but Adetta shakes her head.

“No, I would prefer to complete some of my other studies before tackling magic. I’m almost finished with geography, basic etiquette, and dance lessons anyway—I will have completed them in a year from now, and then I will be able to focus on magic studies fully, as I intend.”

Okay, maybe she was speaking stiffly, but it was fun to talk like a lady dowager while being a seven-year-old little miss. Yes, she took pleasure in creeping out everyone around her. She’d grow out of it, maybe. Or she’d grow into it.

“Ah, that is a wise move,” her father praised. “You are a very diligent student, we wouldn’t want to burden you more than necessary. I’ll see who we could hire, and we’ll discuss this again in a year’s time. Will that be fine?”

“Yes, father,” Adetta nods her head. Her sister starts to writhe in father’s hold.

“Dear, put Rosaria on the bed, you know she doesn’t like to be held for long,” Penelope chides, and Crawforde does so, with a put-upon sigh. One of his daughters is cold and creepy, and the other only suffers hugs for short periods of time. And Rosalie, too, had a nickname in the family—Rosaria, because her names were Rosalie Gloria.

Rosaria crawls over to Adetta and plops herself under her sister’s arm, very happy with herself. Adetta smiles and lets her.

♦►☼◄♦

A week after Adetta collapsed, Crawforde receives heart-breaking news—his third cousin Georgina Langton and her husband Paul died in a carriage incident returning from a party during a thunderstorm, orphaning their only son, Elijah.

A week after that, Adetta meets her haunted-eyed cousin face-to-face for the first time.

And so it begins, Mary’s life as Adelia Henrietta Bellville, the villainess of [Regalis: in search of Love!], striking down flags and searching for peace and quiet.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warninngs of the day:  
> As always, a complete and utter lack of beta or proofreading, as well as Adetta behaving like responsible, functional-ish adult in a manner unbecoming of a proper Isekai Protagonist.
> 
> The song of the day is Vienna Teng - Lullaby For A Stormy Night

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

•chapter one•

_Girl gets a stepbrother. Girl goes to the garden. Girl experiences a thunderstorm._

•••

* * *

Elijah is a miserable little thing. Shorter than her, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes—definitely long ways from the determined but kind youth he was in the game. He must have eaten very little in the past week, and Adetta, at least partly, understood why.

She doesn’t say anything as her father introduced him to the servants and her mother, because she rarely spoke unprompted. She wonders if it counted as selective muteness already. Elijah doesn’t seem too keen on speaking either, very much trying not to cry. His eyes are glossy.

Adetta narrows her eyes, thinking. She tries to remember what his hobbies were—each capture target had listed three most favorite things for them to do on their wiki pages, and she read them all, of course, out of sheer boredom if anything else. Now, however, she is straining to remember. If she isn’t wrong, Elijah likes to bake, flower-pressing and scrapbooking. Not really anything she could use without seeming creepy-

She’d just take him into the gardens. That should work. It was summer—with abundance of summer storms and summer flowers and the annoying sun.

With that in mind, she walks over to Elijah who was making himself look smaller under everyone’s pitying gazes. They must be annoying. The boy flinches with her approach, looking at her face, but she doesn’t blame him—her default face switches between completely emotionless, creepy doll and a lazy ‘I’m-so-done-with-everything’ grimace. Right now, it was the creepy doll. It kept maids at bay.

“Want to go to the garden with me?” she asks and, with a little delay, he nods timidly, taking her extended hand. Adetta didn’t quite remember how Adelia’s first interaction with Elijah was supposed to go, but she is pretty sure there was a tantrum involved. The villainess made sure to show him that he was not wanted, but for Adetta, that would prove rather counterproductive. She wanted an amicable relationship with Elijah, maybe even a friendly one—anything that would lead him to thinking twice about murdering it, or lead him away from the idea completely.

Dragging him out to pick flowers, hand in hand and maybe a bit too solemn, is as good a start as any. Baby steps, one at a time, and she would have an amicable relationship with him before she knew. Probably.

“Be careful in the sun!” Penelope calls as Adetta drags Elijah away and out, but otherwise lets them go alone. Adetta never really needed supervision, and her father probably understood what she was trying to do.

♦►☼◄♦

The Bellvilles were filthy rich. Like, the-king-sometimes-borrows-money-from-us rich, and Adetta has lived in this reality for almost eight years now, and it’s something she’s used to, something normal, and yet it still startles her at times, when she forgets herself and is, once more, Mary, 27, frugal and living in her small flat all by herself. And then she goes somewhere, sees something that’s pretty much an ostentatious display of wealth—like the lush, ridiculous, sprawling gardens surrounding the mansion for example—and her mind king of resets, and she remembers that this is her normal now.

Walking through the gardens, beautiful and well-kept and full of flowers, like those she remembers from the past-memory-dreams that also make her Mary, those were rare, and nobody really owned them, and one had to pay to visit most of the time. These were hers to wander around as she pleased, surrounded by dahlias and marigolds and daisies and many, many other flowers she didn’t know names of. The sunflowers, taller than her, taller than her father even and the whimsical plumerias.

She kind of expected fairies to jump out of the bushes, since this world had magic and all.

“We have a lot of flowers,” she says eventually, breaking the silence and maybe startling Elijah a bit. But he was enjoying the scenery. “I can’t even name most of them. Do you like flowers?”

“Yes,” he says timidly. “My mother really loved them, too. It- It reminds me of her.”

“That’s good,” she tells him, crouching down to pick a slower that looks like a pink pom-pom on a green stick. She doesn’t know its name. “I don’t even know what these are, just that they look nice in flower crowns.”

“These are alliums, I think,” Elijah supplies, and somehow, finally, some shred of light returns to his eyes. It’s small, but it’s significand for the now, and Adetta will take it.

“Alliums, huh,” she says and turns towards the boy. She then holds the pom-pom flower by the very bottom of its stem, and boinks the flower on his nose. He startles.

Just in case someone thought she wasn’t eccentric enough. She was wavering between the creepy horror doll and the worry-free hippie in disposition, sometimes.

“There are a lot of sad memories with you now,” she tells Elijah seriously. “Let’s go and make some happier ones.”

“How?” he asks, and his eyes gloss over.

“We can go make flower-crowns, and you can teach me their names. And before that, we can sit on a bench, and you can cry into my shoulder for an hour. You look like you could use a good cry.”

“But I’m a boy, boys don’t cry-“

“Bullshit,” Adetta says, crude and common and not at all anything an archduke’s daughter should even know, let alone say, and Elijah startles again. He’s very much like a rabbit to her. “If you’re sad, you’re supposed to cry it out. It won’t make all the sad go away, but it will help. You know, like you have to let the puss and infected blood out of the wound for it to start healing? That’s what crying is. If you don’t cry, it will only fester and get worse.”

Elijah looks at her as if she suddenly told him that up is down and down is up and that there were aliens about, but then his face crumbles and so does his composure, and suddenly he’s throwing himself at her and wailing, a pitiful, prolonged, heart-wrenching soul-

He sounds exactly like a boy who lost his parents a week ago.

Adetta wraps her arms around him as they slide and sit on the pavement between the flowers, and she doesn’t care about the dress—she never did before and she certainly won’t now, too busy gently rocking her cousin/relative/brother/ _whatever Elijah was supposed to be_ , and whispering soft reassurances that it’s okay to cry, that he should let it all out, that she’s here for him-

That she means it surprises even her.

It’s a start of… Something, definitely. She hopes it’s something good.

(This scene happened once or a countless times already, in a future that will never be where a young man who was once a boy who lost his parents cried his heart out before the brave heroine, who kept whispering soft reassurances into his ear. It took a lot of effort and trust, because the young man was too afraid to open up. He was no longer the young boy who desperately yearned for someone, anyone to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay.)

♦►☼◄♦

After all is said and done, and the left sleeve of Adetta’s dress is soaked with tears, it’s as if a huge weight was lifted from Elijah’s shoulders, almost physically. He stands a little taller, spine a little straighter, and the light in his eyes is nowhere near as lively as it perhaps should be, but it’s no longer non-existent. The boy now also sports a tiny, kind-of-sad, kind-of-happy smile.

“Better?” Adetta asks. She won’t ask if he’s okay, because he obviously isn’t, but he looks a bit more like a functioning human person now, at least. It’s progress.

“I- I think so,” Elijah answers, kind-of uncertain but also kind-of sure.

“Do you want to go get something to drink?” she asks. It’s hot outside, over thirty Celsius probably, and they are tiny children and should keep hydrated, and he just finished crying. He nods, wiping his face with the gem of his shirt, and lets Adetta grab his wrist and drag him back towards the house.

A young lady of her standing shouldn’t even know where the kitchen was, probably. That was what maids said, anyway, commenting one of her many peculiarities. But Adetta not only knew where kitchen was, she was also aware of the locations of most utensils and was perfectly capable of making some simple sandwiches and grabbing the juice. Yes, she needed to climb over the counters and tables to reach things, and support herself with wind magic, but it was easy enough.

Elijah looked at her as if she just showed him how to transmute dirt into gold, despite the fact that all she did was made a sandwich for them. Little noble boy marveling at how a little noble girl could even begin to be proficient with things that are actually useful at life. It made her oddly smug, despite the fact that it was something that twenty-seven-year-old Mary would throw together when she had maybe ten minutes left to leave and it really, really wasn’t anything special. But for a little boy who knew nothing about the real world it probably was.

They go out then, sneaking out and giggling like children, paper-wrapped sandwiches in hand, avoiding the housekeep. It’s Adetta’s idea, and it’s stupid, but for a moment Elijah looked like an actual child having fun. They ran back out to the gardens, picked a whole armful of flowers, and then Adetta taught him how to make flower crowns for whole half a day. By the end of the day, they had enough flower crowns for most of the household, and the gardener probably hated them, regardless of the fact that most of the flowers they used were the wild and untended, from the outskirts.

Adetta made a game out of it later—Elijah would carry the crowns, and she would try to throw them, with help of her magic, so that they would land on people’s heads. Elijah laughed every time she startled someone, but soon enough, everyone they came across had a flower crown on and Elijah looked almost happy.

So of course all of Adetta’s efforts go crashing down in flames when the night falls.

♦►☼◄♦

She is startled awake when a lightning strikes somewhere uncomfortably close, painting her room an eerie, blue light just as she opens her eyes, shaken back into the world of consciousness by a deafening thunderclap. It is widely known that Adetta is a reserved, quiet child, wildly uncomfortable with loud sounds and crowds. Especially unexpected loud noises.

Therefore, Adetta obviously hated storms. Now, don’t get her wrong, she actually enjoys the pitter-patter of the raindrops and the howling wind—it’s just the lightning, which comes too sudden and too unexpected for her to cover her ears—that she hates with the same burning passion as she hates someone talking too loud next to her or, worse, screaming. But she can’t tell the storm to shut the hell up, now can she?

The lightning strikes again, and the thunderclap follows nearly instantly, signifying just how uncomfortably close it struck, and Adetta whines, failing to cover her ears in time. She can feel a migraine starting. She doesn’t remember ever reading about Adelia having this problem of sound sensitivity, but she remembers that as Mary, she had the very same issue. It went away with age to the point even living in the noisy, bright, crowded city wasn’t that big of a problem, but right now, she hated everything-

Another lightning, another thunder, and she growled, fighting an urge to throw something. It wouldn’t do her any good anyway, and she didn’t have many throwable things in her room anyway—well, she did have a lot of generally throwable things, but nothing she would actually want to fling anywhere, maybe save the porcelain vase on her nightstand to see it shatter against the wall. Her room in general was small for a member of the house, but that was her choice. As someone adamant on keeping her room tidy by herself, she limited the space to half of the usual, and further made it smaller with drawers and bookshelves. It helped her now, a relative safe bubble that a room twice or thrice the size would not provide.

Rosaria was safe and tucked away in their parents room, because she was still a baby. Adetta could deal with it on her own. Everything was fine-

Another lightning. Another thunderclap.

Adetta’s eyes widened, and she sprung from her bed, bare feet thudding onto the carpeted floor before the sheets even settled, and she bolted out of the door, heart pounding blood through her ears.

She forgot, gods, she forgot, why did she forget-?!

Third door down the southern corridor, third door down the southern corridor, the children guestroom, quick-

The hallways were dark, laden with shadows and sounds of wind howling inside that would scare any child, and Adetta didn’t care. She found the door, big and oaken and painted to shine like all the others. She knocked, not banging but not rapping on the wood either, even if she knew that she probably wasn’t heard.

“Elijah, it’s me, Adelia. I’m coming in!” she said, and just after she did, another lightning, and another barely-belated thunderclap. There was a muffled shriek from inside the room, but she still heard it. It was a gut-wrenching sound, so she pushed the door open and entered the room. It was dark and big, in the southern wing with a whole balcony on its own. The raindrops were hitting the glass, and the wind kept rattling the panes.

The bed was messed up, but empty.

“Elijah?” she calls. “Elijah, it’s okay, I’m here, you can come out now!” she said, softly but loud enough to cut above the rain. No answer, just quiet sobs from somewhere within the room.

“Elijah?” she tries again, looking around. It was dark, the only light would be provided by a lightning, but Adetta honestly wished the one form a while ago was the last one, hopefully for the whole storm. She started looking around, focusing on the sobs to get closer to the source. She found him eventually, huddled in the corner farthest from the window, lodged between a drawer and a wall and curled into a ball, tiny body wracked with sobs.

“Elijah?” she says, much softer than before, and he raised his head to look at her. Even in the dark she could see how red his eyes were. “Can you come here? It will be fine, I promise, just- Just come to me, okay?”

He sniffed, nodding gently, and started to move slowly-

Another lightning, another thunderclap. Elijah shrieked in pure, primal terror and collided with Adetta, clinging to her as if she were a lifeline. She only brought her arms up and held him, kneeling on the floor like that for the second time that day.

“Mother, father…” Elijah whines into her shoulder, as she rubbed circles on his back, humming softly. She couldn’t really do much other than be there for him at the moment, with the severe thunderstorm serving as nothing but a reminder of a week ago, when his parents died during and due to a weather much the same.

“Come on,” she says, before another lightning can surprise them. “Let’s go to my room—it’s in the eastern wing, and it’s smaller. It’s better there, okay?”

“Don’t let go,” Elijah whines, tightening his grip. Adetta huffs.

“Okay- Okay. Uh- How to get you- Okay, listen, I need you to wrap your legs around me.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll carry you, so wrap your legs around me. Okay?”

“O-okay. Okay.”

He does just that, and Adetta manages to stand up from her kneeling position with the help of her wind magic, carrying a boy only barely shorter and lighter than her through the dark. Another lightning surprise them just after she managed to gently kick the door to Elijah’s guestroom closed, and it sends them both into a wall. Elijah, because it’s lightning, and Adetta, because of Elijah and the sound both. She just clenches her teeth, gets her bearings together and moves, pushed forward mostly by stubborn determination. Elijah is heavy for her eight-year-old body, and he’s shaking and prone to jumps exactly when and because of what makes her the weakest in the situation.

The situation is really not ideal, but she makes it, somehow, the door to her room still open after she hurried out. She closes it after she’s back inside, and heads to bed, sitting Elijah on the matters.

“You have to let me go for a moment, okay?” she tells him. “So that we can both get on the bed.”

He shivers, only pressing himself more to her. Adetta takes a breath, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

“It’ alright, I’m right here. I just need to get on the bed, too, okay? It’ll just take few seconds, I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

“You aren’t?” he asks, voice tiny and wet with tears. “Like mother- a-and father-“

“No, Eli,” she hums softly. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. But I’d like to be on the bed.”

“O-okay. I- Okay,” he sniffs, and it takes him a while, but he manages to make himself let go and scoot so that Adetta can climb up. The bed is big, easily able to fit three adults comfortably, so two small children sink in the mattresses and pillows. Adetta moves them both to the head of the bed, so that they can lay on the pillows, and she can pull the comforter over them both, and Elijah latches right back onto her the second they’re under covers. He’s still shaking like a leaf, but now she can at least manoeuvre them so that they’re both comfortable.

“I hate storms, too,” she says conversationally. “They’re loud and sudden.”

Elijah doesn’t answer, too busy muffling his sobs with the sleeve of her nightgown, but he listens, she knows that much. She moves, kissing the top of his head and brings her free hand to thread through his hair. It’s very soft, and smells kind-of like the sea. She starts humming softly, and then, quietly, she sings to him a lullaby she once memorized.

(Mary never had anyone sing her to sleep. Adetta didn’t need anyone to sing her to sleep.

Elijah was scared and shivering by her side.)

_  
_

> _Little child, be not afraid_
> 
> _Though rain pounds harshly against the glass_
> 
> _Like an unwanted stranger, there is no danger_
> 
> _I am here tonight_
> 
> _Little child, be not afraid_
> 
> _Though thunder explodes and lightning flash_
> 
> _Illuminates your tear-stained face_
> 
> _I am here tonight_
> 
> _And someday you'll know_
> 
> _That nature is so_
> 
> _The same rain that draws you near me_
> 
> _Falls on rivers and land_
> 
> _On forests and sand_
> 
> _Makes the beautiful world that you'll see_
> 
> _In the morning_

_  
_

She sang, and kept singing, and Elijah’s sobs slowly lessened, and then subsided. When the next lightning came, he startled and hugged her tighter, but held much better than before.

_  
_

> _For you know, once even I was a_
> 
> _Little child, and I was afraid_
> 
> _But a gentle someone always came_
> 
> _To dry all my tears, trade sweet sleep for fears_
> 
> _And to give a kiss goodnight_
> 
> _Well now I am grown_
> 
> _And these years have shown_
> 
> _That rain's a part of how life goes_
> 
> _But it's dark and it's late_
> 
> _So I'll hold you and wait_
> 
> _'Til your frightened eyes do close_
> 
> _And I hope that you'll know_
> 
> _That nature is so_
> 
> _The same rain that draws you near me_
> 
> _Falls on rivers and land_
> 
> _On forests and sand_
> 
> _Makes the beautiful world that you'll see_
> 
> _In the morning_
> 
> _Everything's fine in the morning_
> 
> _The rain'll be gone in the morning_
> 
> _But I'll still be here in the morning_

 

The storm subsides eventually, the lightning, the wind, the rain, and the two children fall asleep in the quiet comfort of refreshed summer world, close together and safe.

It’s like a beginning.

 

 


	3. Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a chapter, but I used canva to do quick character cards that showcase the main characters but reveal- Well, if you've read the summary of the story, they actually add nothing new. Heroine is deluded, the no-longer-half-dead elf joins the peanut gallery of Adetta's, that king of jazz.
> 
> The character pictures don't belong to me, I've found them on pinterest and anime-pictures.net. I know for sure that I'm using Violette from Reine des Fleurs as Adetta, some guy from Persona for Elijah and Ookurikara from Touken Ranbu as Felix (with changed eye color). That being said, I own none of these pictures and I make no profit off of them. Or this story for that matter.
> 
> Now without further ado: Adetta, Adetta's peanut gallery and the Heroine.
> 
> (Also their theme colors, if I ever feel like color-coding them for one reason or another.)


	4. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi, a bit less stress-written but, if my word count isn't lying, about one and a half chapter worth of word count. I almost broke 5k in, like, three hours, y'all.
> 
> In other news, I have a beta! Which means the mistakes will run less rampant! All clap for Magikarp Karp, an evil, evil enabler from my CPwUR Discord and meanwhile I'll swap the chapters for corrected ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's warnings: violence, fantasy racism, powerful noble family dealing with crimminals in a way a powerful noble family realistically would. Also, Adetta gets pissed off for the first time since she was reborn. Also mentions of possible mental illness.

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter two•

_Girl talks with father. Girl goes on a shopping trip. Girl picks up a stray._

•••

* * *

 

If Elijah and original Adelia started off on a bad foot which then became worse, then Elijah and Adetta of the current were-

Well.

Somewhere along the way (which Adetta bets was after the thunderstorm, or even during it) Elijah devolved into a duckling prone to anxiety if he was away from her for too long. Like, he would dissolve into a crying, panicking mess and the third time her parents tried to separate them for longer than an hour, Adetta called quits and just allowed Elijah follow her almost everywhere.

Upside was that when she studied—which took most of her time, because she was a nerd who loved reading everything that she got her hands on, as for her even a history book was, for her, a fantasy novel of great interest—so would Elijah. And he would remind her to stop and go eat something, or just bring snacks with him to the reading room. Adetta stopped trying to stop him after a series of pitiful looks.

Downside was- Downside was that he was suffering either from codependency, or DPD, she wasn’t sure which yet, and that was unhealthy. It would have been better if it were DPD of the two, but Adetta honestly preferred it was codependency instead—because that could be eventually broken and rid of with enough work. But then, he didn’t have problems making decisions for himself, he just really didn’t feel well while left Adetta-less, so it probably, hopefully, was.

And, hopefully, he’d grow out of it by the time his closeness to her could be interpreted by others as something of less innocent nature.

Or, worse, if Elijah got the idea that they were more than friends/stepsiblings/emotional support duo.

(It wasn’t that Adetta entertained the idea of having a wide selection of men to choose from, like a young lady of her standing probably would anyway, or that she feared a scandal; it was that she entertained the idea of being left completely alone on the romantic front, thank you very much, whether it was Elijah or anyone else.)

Yes, this also meant that he was incapable of sleeping by himself. Adetta understood during thunderstorms, but all the other times? But he was a child, frightened one who lost his parents recently, and he tended to be happier when around her, so she suffered through it.

Which, of course, made Rosaria jealous and therefore Adetta slept not with one additional tiny human in her bed, but two, because Rosaria was entering the age when she was convinced the world revolved around her and everything was hers—especially her beloved sister.

Who, which pissed Rosaria off to no end until she realized it gave no effect, took very little of it. Whenever Rosaria would throw a tantrum, Adetta would withdraw and grow very, very cold and curt, which frightened the child much more than any of their parents yelling, or threats of being put in time-out or otherwise disciplined. The upside was, Rosaria’s toddler-tantrums were few and far in between. The downside was, Adetta became the disciplining tool their parents would use against both other children. She gave her parents a stink eye every time they did, and they just beamed at her completely unrepentant.

The joys of being the oldest sibling, she guessed, despite the fact that Elijah was actually, chronologically, few months older than her. He was from the end of winter, and she was from early fall, which, actually, was rapidly approaching, and with it, her eight birthday.

As well as the beginning of the war.

She was becoming increasingly nervous, and everyone eventually noticed her fidgeting. Eli and Rosaria grew even clingier, the toddler demanding Adetta read for her up to four times a day, and Eli barely allowing her time to dress and bathe, and Crawforde with Penelope, previously content to largely leave their daughter to her own devices, started making more time for her.

That, and Crawforde unapologetically used her as an assistant with the massive mountains of paperwork he had to go through. Business and land management. But he let her stamp things with the family seal, and she did, with the gleefulness of a proper eight-year-old (to be).

“Father, and if I marry?” she asks him when he not-so-subtly insinuated that she maybe should start looking into this family headship business.

“Then the husband will either marry into our house, or you’ll become a Queen,” he answers.

“And if I don’t want to marry at all?” she presses, and he huffs out a chuckle and puts a hand on her head.

“You don’t know that for sure yet, but no matter what happens, you’re the eldest scion of the Bellville Archduchy, and you will inherit it eventually. What happens after is anyone’s guess.”

“And social pressures? Nobility are assholes.”

The last part startles a laugh out of Crawforde.

“The only one who can really make us do anything is the king, and he’s a friend of mine. And even if not, your mother and the queen are best friends, so if anything happens, we’ll just have his wife straighten him.”

“Huh. Okay. Is that where mother goes every fortnight? To the queen?”

He nods.

That would solve the mystery of where Penelope vanished every two weeks for two to three days. The Capital was about half a day ride from the Archduchy, and she would stay day or two. The queen never visited, but that much was to be expected—assassins and politicking and all that. Adetta wished she knew more about the queen, though, but the sources for [Regalis] were very sparse on her—as well as her mother. Just that they were friends and queen’s death really hit her bad.

(Well, now Adetta had much bigger incentive to try and stop the princess’ accident if at all possible. She didn’t care for the prince, but her mother was a whole different story.)

She sometimes wondered why, but it was probably because they weren’t all that important characters.

Except, her mother would later join Ifa Nalore and lead an army against Sheothia in the second war once Adelia was killed in the game proper, acting as the final villain, so Adetta would argue if she was really a side character.

Also, why the fuck would elves so eagerly accept a human noblewoman?

A riddle for another day.

♦►☼◄♦

The summer eventually started to morph into winter. The air grew colder, the heat-caused storms to subside, turning into cold rain with a lot of wind and little thunder. The trees were slowly turning yellow, orange, red, and brown. Then suddenly the fall was here, Adetta’s birthday in a week, a week after that a planned countryside trip to celebrate because the weathermaster predicted the last storm of the season exactly during her birthday. Thankfully Adetta wasn’t old enough to have her social debut yet, so her birthday, for now, was purely a family affair.

However, now, a week before she turned eight, her father decided to take her and Elijah to the town maybe half an hour away in carriage. It was part of the Bellville territory, he had some business with the Mayor and so Penelope had him pick up a dress order for her, and take the eldest children—Adetta, so that she could find a nice present (which everyone knew she’d make a beeline for the bookstore), and Elijah because he still suffered being apart from her about as well as a month ago.

They enter the city with little fanfare—just them, their coach and two guards from the house because you’re never certain what might happen. Of course, Crawforde wouldn’t have taken the guards if he were alone, as he was fairly skilled in both sword and his—innately destructive—magic.

The town is small, rather picturesque medieval-ish location. It doesn’t even stink, which Adetta initially slightly feared. Medieval cities, at least in the history of Mary’s world, stunk of excrements and everything else.

They stopped briefly before the city hall for Crawforde to dismount.

“Not that I think anything will happen,” Crawforde says, “but if it does, you’re allowed to use your magic to maim. Even kill if your life depends on it. Understood?”

They both nod and he leaves them without much further ado, as the coach turns the carriage towards the bookstore. The store is rather small and not at all impressive compared to the Bellville library, but the owner makes sure to always have the new things in stock—fiction, mostly, contrary to Bellville’s stash of mostly political, historical and theoretical books, and others on every topic but genuine fun.

And Adetta liked to indulge in a cheesy romance novel sometimes.

“Are we not going with the guards?” Elijah asks as they leave the carriage, the two guardsmen leisurely standing next to it, chatting about something.

“No, I don’t like making fake crowd in the store anyway. They know to come if I scream.”

“What if you can’t scream?” the boy asks, and she chuckles.

“Magic reacts to emotions, and my magic is dual Wind and Lightning,” she tells him. “If I’m panicked or angry, what made me panicked or angry will probably get fried and slashed, repeatedly, in random order. And I’ll have a plenty time to scream.”

“Oh,” he says, and that’s that. He follows her to the entrance, but she stops right before the door, her sensitive hearing picking something in the quiet hum of life that doesn’t quite fit.

Soft, pained whimpering and curses, and a sound of something striking something else that sounds suspiciously like flesh. She moves from the bookstore door, suddenly stiff and alert, and towards the edge of the alleyway.

There, in the shadows, four grown men are kicking a tiny child, laying curled on the ground. The child is maybe five, at most, dressed in rags, bleeding and bruised, with animal ears pressed against his skull and tail tucked between his folded legs.

 _Ah_ , Adetta thinks, _fantasy racism. How **lovely**._

One of the thugs gets slammed into the wall with a gust of magical wind before they can really react. Before she can ever consciously make a decision—her magic just surges, eager to answer its wielder sudden, swift rage.

She doesn’t take long to take advantage of their obvious confusion, as they haven’t noticed her yet. She takes a deep breath and raises her voice for the first time since she was reborn, just to shriek, shrill and loud; “HELP! BANDITS!”

Because as furious as she is, she still isn’t stupid and knows that taking on three grown men is not something she’s capable of with her current age and body. Yes, her magic is more powerful than the average, but she’s eight, and relying exclusively on instinct.

The coach of their carriage pounces into the alley once she’s barely finished screaming, Bellville guards hot on his heels. He roars—a twig of a man, really, but tall and sharp-faced—and jumps at one of the thugs, because how dare they make his lady shriek? Adetta doesn’t waste time, though, grabbing Elijah by the wrist and sprinting towards the cowering beastfolk child. One of the thugs notices her and makes grab for her hair—long, pale lilac, standing out in the darkened alley like a light—but her magic lashes with her anger and he roars as the magical wind slashes his hand viciously through skin and muscle.

She doesn’t remember being angry too many times since her rebirth, and it was always a silent thing and never harmful, always passing after few minutes to an hour.

She doesn’t remember ever being furious.

She turns her head to look at her assailant, eyes pink and glowing with nothing short of murderous rage, and he, even through the pain of mutilated arm, gasps in fear.

The next air blade slams across his chest, ripping the leather jacket, and linen shirt and his skin, and knocking him backwards into the wall before anyone can even jump at him.

She’s not even doing this. Well, she is, but not consciously—it’s her magic, surging happily to serve her in rage after years of calmness, after years of her not needing it. It’s as if it now developed a mind of it’s own, focusing its destructive power on any and all she turns her rage towards.

She tramps it down, and can almost feel the disappointment of the magic, as if it were sentient (and maybe it was, who knows, it was magic), as she brought it back under her normally near-ironclad control. She falls down on her knees by the curled child, and maybe scrapes her knees but there are much more pressing matters at hand.

The child is breathing still, at least, which is good. But he’s shivering and whimpering, and flinches when she moves too close.

“Elijah, how good is your healing ability?” she asks her stepbrother, and he blinks at her owlishly.

“Uh, I mean, I still haven’t learned anything-“

She gives him a look. “You healed my papercut few days ago. Can you try alleviating the pain?”

“Yes, I- I can try,” he gulps, and holds his hands over the child. It whines, curling even tighter into a fetal position and looks at the two of them.

The child has the most striking, blue eyes Adetta has ever seen.

“It’s alright now,” she tells the child softly, smoothing her features as much as she can. Her hands still shake with rage and her magic still writhes right under the surface, but she stomps it down. _Not now_. “It’s going to be fine. We will help, okay?”

She keeps softly speaking to the child as Elijah uses his magic with the water from his flask, and whatever he does works, to a degree at least, because the whimpering lessens and some of the smaller bruises on the child’s body seem to age and heal from angry red to ugly purple and even rotten greenish-yellow right before their eyes.

Elijah starts breathing harder, and then she stops him.

“It’s okay. You’ve done enough, you can rest now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was really helpful.”

Elijah takes a deep breath and smiles, as Adetta turns back to the beastfolk child. He’s looking at them, scared but somewhat hopeful, and she sighs.

“Can you stand?” she asks the child slowly, and it sits up slowly.

“Miss?” the coach asks from where the guards have tied the whimpering thugs down. “Uh, I-“

“Take the bandits to the carriage for now, I will deal with them later,” she tells him coldly.

“Might I ask what will happen to them?”

“They will be dealt with,” she says, and those of the thugs who are still aware yell at her that no, they won’t, who the hell she thinks she is anyway, and some choice racial slurs directed at the child they were kicking. Adetta closes her eyes, takes a fortifying breath when her magic threatens to surge and decapitate the idiot on the spot and says; “if they think that murdering a defenseless child, just because he has animal ears and tail, is perfectly okay, then when will they turn towards everyone else? They don’t respect intelligent life, and therefore theirs should not be respected either. Do you understand?”

“Milady-“

“I want them treated like the rabid animals they are and **put** **down** ,” she growls, and the coach and guards both shiver and nod, taking the men away without any further arguing. They have never saw their little lady angry before, let alone furious, and it frightened them.

Adetta, on the other hand, sighs and paws at her eyes, suddenly very weary and exhausted.

What a mess. What a fucking mess.

But she’s glad she’s here anyway, as it enabled her saving this child. She also knew the law of the land—as an Archduchess, she was only a step down from the Royalty, and so attacking her was basically a death sentence all on its own.

She helps the tiny beastfolk child—it’s a boy, she later realizes—stand up and allows him to lean on her for support. He’s skinny, good head shorter than her and weights almost nothing. She allows Elijah to support himself on her other side, as he’s exhausted after using his magic, and they slowly make their way to the carriage.

In the end, it’s pure stubbornness on her part that they even get there, as her magic finally recedes back under control, leaving her also physically exhausted on top of mentally worn out.

It’s just one of those days.

She pushes both Elijah and the child into the carriage before climbing in herself, and gives the coach a stink eye when he tries to say anything. Yes, he might’ve flown to the rescue first, but her patience is in really short supply right now, especially for prejudice- and racism-fueled quips.

“We’re going to the city hall to see my father, now. Have those rabid beasts follow the carriage,” she tells the coach and the guards before closing the door. She’ll apologize to them later—for now, she’s still mad. She does a one-eighty, though, or tries to, when she speaks to the beastfolk boy in the carriage, trying not to startle him any more than he already is; “are you better now?”

The carriage lurches and he startles, whining pitifully and latching onto Elijah’s sleeve. Her stepbrother wordlessly asks her for help, but doesn’t push the boy away, the same way she didn’t push him away that first thunderstorm, or any other time he was upset or scared.

It feels like a personal development.

Adetta instead goes for the basket that the cook prepared for them for the road and pulls out some sandwiches and a bottle of water. She considers just giving the sandwich to the boy, but with how hungrily he’s looking at it, she opts to instead rip it and feed him piece by piece, afraid of what might happen if he scarfs it down too fast. They’re halfway through the sandwich when the carriage stops and the coach knocks.

“We’re by the city hall, Milady”

“Go fetch my father, then,” she replies, not stopping what she’s doing. The coach says something affirmative and walks into the city hall. Her father comes out, Mayor in tow, just when she’s done feeding the beastfolk boy.

It’s the Mayor who speaks first.

“Melvin, my boy, what happened to you!” he shrieks, and it’s one of the thugs who answer. Adetta growls and all but pounces at the door, pretty much just kicking it open.

“Justice happened, that’s what!” she snarls, jumping down and foregoing the steps, landing gracefully on the paved road. Elijah and, subsequently, the beastfolk boy, scramble after her, and she sees in the corner of her eye Elijah helping the smaller child down.

“Milady!” the Mayor, a short, stout man, startles when she, a tiny child with a newly-sparked fury, glares at him with nothing short of contempt.

“Father!” she says forcefully, and even Crawforde startles, so used to calm, collected Adetta who always spoke softly, if with a bite. “These four animals would have very nearly murdered a child had Elijah and I not stopped them!”

Crawforde looks at her then, and at Elijah and the little child that unlatches himself from the boy only to latch to Adetta’s dress, at all the bruises and ragged clothes, bare, bruised feet, split lip, dog ears pressed to his skull and tail between his legs. What he sees, Adetta isn’t sure, but his attitude changes as if with a snap of fingers.

Her father looks between the little beastfolk boy and the rapidly paling mayor, something changing gradually in his face and demeanor when he realizes just exactly what has happened. His face morphs into something ugly, saturated with the very same brand of rage she felt not so long ago. The smell of ozone fills the air in his immediate vicinity, his hair and clothes begin to swat on a wind that isn’t there, and lightning begins to surge up and down his body.

Adetta might have inherited her mother’s looks, but the fury is the exact mirror of her father, right to the magic, previously under ironclad control, suddenly free and lashing out.

It’s the first time she sees her father angry, and she’s infinitely glad it’s not directed at her.

“I have told you, Mayor Hurley, over and over again, that any kind of discrimination against non-humans will not be tolerated anywhere within my territory, have I not?” he says, voice hard and deceptively level, but his eyes speak for him, scream even. They resemble storm clouds now, and not at all the sea on a clear day.

“Y-yes, my liege, I-“ the Mayor stumbles in his words.

“Then why, pray tell, Mayor Hurley, is there a starved, homeless, beastfolk child on your streets, nearly murdered by your citizens?” Crawforde looms over the man, who starts to sweat and squeak. “Why was this child, younger than my own, nearly murdered by your son? Why was he not taken in by the orphanage and cared for, like a child should be?”

Before the Mayor can answer, his son does so for him.

“Because it’s a filthy animal, that’s why!”

 _And that_ , Adetta thinks without pity, _is how you sign your own death sentence._

Crawforde straightens his spine, takes a deep breath and seemingly calms down-

Only to lash his hand out, and with it a mixture of wind and lightning, striking the man in the left leg, quite probably shattering the bones in and frying the muscle. The Mayor’s son howls in agony, but Crawforde’s eyes are on the Mayor.

“All four of them will be executed today, before dawn,” he says, voice low, sharp and very dangerous. “I am the owner of this land, and I make the rules. If the rules are broken, there are consequences. And if those rabid creatures think that they’re justified in killing an innocent child just because he has animal ears and tail, then they don’t deserve to live.”

It’s not word for word what Adetta said, but it’s exceptionally close and she can’t help a small smile. She might have been someone else entirely, a whole life away, but as much as she’s her mother’s miniature, she’s also her father’s daughter through and through.

He leaves no room for the argument, and whatever begging tactic Mayor had in mind dies before it’s let out with just one hard glare. The city guards drag the thugs, kicking and screaming, to the jail under the city hall.

“It’s okay,” she tells the small child quivering behind her, latched onto her dress. “It’s going to be okay. I will take care of you?”

He looks up at her with something that’s almost hope.

Of course Elijah takes that moment to latch onto her other arm with a jealous huff. Wonderful.

“Father, I want to go home,” she says tiredly.

“Oh,” Crawforde blinks at her. “Did you get the book you wanted?”

“You think I had time?” she asks him, trying to telepathically shove at him all the tiredness and weariness she’s feeling, so that he understands. He sighs, kneeling in front of her.

“What are we supposed to give you for your birthday then? Books are the only thing you like, and even then if you’re not the one to pick them we’re probably going to get it wrong.”

 _Is he criticizing my choices_? Adetta thinks. _Rude. They only **seem** random._

She looks down at the ragged child clinging to her.

“Let me take him to the manor instead then,” she says, motioning the boy with her head.

“I was going to do it anyway, it doesn’t count,” Crawforde answers, and she huffs.

“Is there a healer in the town?” she asks instead. She’s pretty ignorant as to the layout and residents—city hall and the bookstore, and that one inn they go to sometimes at central plaza are the only things she’s aware even exist in the town.

“Yes,” Crawforde answers, looking at the boy. “I’ll take you there.”

“Okay. We’ll just rest for a bit and then go shopping. Elijah and I are both tired, after all.”

“You I understand, but why Elijah?”

Elijah blushes. “I, um, I helped, too. With my healing magic.”

“He numbed the pain, and even healed some bruises,” Adetta clarifies.

“That- That is an exceedingly good starting level for healing power,” Crawforde praises, patting Elijah’s head. The boy blushes happily and buries his head in Adetta’s shoulder.

What is her life even, she’s supposed to be a loathsome villainess, not a cuddle-toy for sad children.

She doesn’t push any of them away, and Crawforde smiles knowingly at her, much calmer than a moment before.

♦►☼◄♦

The visit to the healer is… Weird. At first, the doctor tries to be cheeky and weasel out of treating a beastfolk child. Then, Crawforde comes down on him like a wrath of gods, and suddenly the old fart is perfectly polite and obedient.

Well, when you’re threatened with your whole livelihood being shut down by possibly the only person who actually **can** , you start singing a whole new song.

Normally, her father would never do this. Normally, her father isn’t so pissed off that standing next to him ends with a painful zap of magical electricity.

“Do you have anyone? Anywhere to go to?” Adetta asks him later, when he’s sitting in a chair looking at his bandaged hands in wonder. Thankfully he’s not too terribly hurt, just bruised, as beastfolk are generally far sturdier than humans.

“No,” he answers timidly. “It was me and mom, and mom is- Mom is-“

Is it bad that Adetta actually has experience dealing with those situations?

She opens her arms wordlessly, and the boy crashes into her chest and curls on her lap, bawling into the front of her dress and she hums softly, patting his head gently as running her hand through his hair is impossible with how matted it is.

“Can you tell us what happened to your mom?” Crawforde asks softly, kneeling by the two children. For a moment, he gets no answer, but the boy looks at him eventually. Adetta can’t see it with how they’re sitting, but her father looks as if he just got punched in the gut.

“They took her,” the boy says. “The bad men, they took her, and when I found her, she wouldn’t move anymore!”

“Fuck,” Adetta hisses, pressing her cheek to the top of his head. “Fucking- What the fuck is wrong with those pathetic excuses of people in this fucking rat-infested shithole.”

Nobody comments on her crude language.

“Child,” Crawfode says with a pained voice, “how old are you?”

“Um… Six summers.”

“Fuck,” he says in the exact same manner as Adetta had, and hides his face in his hands.

♦►☼◄♦

“What’s your name?” she asks the boy once he calmed down, because it just escaped her before. He blinks at her owlishly.

“Mom always called me Pup.”

“That’s not a name, though,” Adetta says. “That’s an endearment.”

“Then I don’t have a name.”

She sighs, pressing her forehead against the top of his head. Se can feel his ribs, even through her dress, and it’s not a pleasant sensation.

“How about you name him then,” Elijah proposes off-handedly, from where he’s sitting on one of the chairs. Adetta blinks up at him in question.

“I mean-“

“I want it,” the boy says before Elijah can finish his thought. “I want a name. Please?”

 _Look what you’ve done_ , she thinks, looking at a wholly unapologetic Elijah.

Except how and what is she supposed to name the boy? She closes her eyes in thought, rummaging through her memories. It seems more appropriate if she picks something from the time she was Mary, anyway. It takes her a moment, but she manages to come up with something coherent.

“Fenrir,” she declares. “From now on you’re Fenrir Grimm. How does that sound?”

“I like it,” Fenrir tells her, snuggling closer. Elijah squawks, jealous and red on the face, but she just sticks her tongue out at him.

♦►☼◄♦

She does get to go to the bookstore eventually, much later, with a freshly washed, barbered and clothed Fenrir and Elijah who, once he managed to latch onto her hand, didn’t let go.

He and Fenrir were already glaring at one another, and she felt a migraine coming.

“You two, either behave or stay in the carriage,” she admonishes eventually, before the bookstore’s door. “Do you understand?”

They both nod and, after a brief consideration, let go of her hands. Elijah knows that Adetta is not a person to make empty threats, and Fenrir maybe senses that she isn’t. They enter the store after her and the owner doesn’t even bat an eye at Fenrir, unlike most of the townsfolk. The boy is looking around as if he never seen a book before which, quite probably, is actually true.

He most definitely doesn’t know how to read either. She’ll probably teach him, if he’s to stay with them—and she’ll make sure he will. He’s six and completely alone.

The shopping goes without further incidents.

♦►☼◄♦

They stay to the execution, but the children are told by Crawforde to stay in the carriage, and Adetta doesn’t have energy left to complain, or to even stay awake. She falls asleep on Elijah’s shoulder, and he falls asleep, too, his head rolling to rest on top of hers. Fenrir curls with his head on her lap. If he falls asleep, she doesn’t know.

They don’t wake up until they’re back at the mansion.

“You’re telling mom,” she slurs at her father as he carries her inside, and falls back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wot? Is this the doggo boi from the inforcards?  
> Why yes, it is he. And this is hiss origin story, basically.


	5. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As now is customary, this chapter has been beta'd for you by Magikarp Karp.  
> Today's warnings: blood. Just. A lot of blood. And arrow wounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More typical Otome Isekai Heroine: I dunno... Let's just let things happen to me.  
> Adetta: *grabs Elijah and Fenrir* YA FOLLOW ME WE'RE GONNA GET IN TROUBLE AND IT'S GONNA BE FUN.

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter three•

_Girl goes on a picnic. Girl wanders into a forest. Girl saves a life._

_•_ ••

The two weeks between their excursion into the town and Adetta’s planned birthday picnic pass in a flurry of caring for Fenrir, answering best wishes and opening gifts from lesser noble houses—which was pretty much everyone else—desperately trying to butter up to Bellvilles, suffering through the last storms of the season and just generally getting ready.

There were even some shy inquiries about possibility of marriage contract. Crawforde and Penelope both would look at her questioningly, after which she’s proceed to gleefully burn each and every one of them over a candle after a prolonged eye contact, instead of bothering to answer verbally.

Just to make sure everyone understood her properly, yes?

She would be the perfect, elegant, graceful lady capable of outwitting everyone and their dog in this political game as it was expected of her, but if she absolutely had to marry, she’d rather have this choice be left exclusively to her.

Not like it wasn’t up to her—she might’ve been her father’s daughter, but she was also her mother’s mini-me, and her mother did absolutely whatever she pleased. The only opinions that mattered were those of her family’s anyway, and not all the other nobles. Also, her parents were convinced that she wouldn’t hesitate to stab a man right on the altar, if she were to be forced to marry. They weren’t wrong, and as amusing for them wouldn’t that be, killing off noble sons left and right wouldn’t be good for the Archduchy in the long term.

Or she’d just publicly flip them off and proceed to ruin them.

(Just because she wasn’t being a psychopathic egomaniac didn’t mean she rid herself of her mean streak; that thing was too useful in showing people what happened if they pressed too much.)

Adetta was eight. Mary was twenty-seven.

She really wasn’t looking for anybody’s acknowledgment, and was already fully formed as a person with individual wants and aspirations who knew how to deal with her emotions and make decisions based on pragmatic view of what’s best for her. And she wasn’t one to let others step all over her either—no; that was a shtick that Mary grew out of come her twenty-second birthday.

If they tried to make her do something she absolutely wasn’t going to do- The worst that could happen, she’d just leave. She’d do perfectly fine as a commoner using Mary’s social skills, maybe open a restaurant or a café with the funds she would liberate her house of beforehand. Or a bakery.

Food sold, after all. Especially quality food for reasonable price.

And she would get some free workforce, because Elijah, Rosaria and Fenrir would absolutely follow.

But those were not her concerns at all, because her parents, unlike most nobles, weren’t fucking morons. Actually, they were really smart, as in not only book smarts, but also the practical comprehension of life. The nobles, those who sent letters at least, were not.

Who normal tries to use eighth birthday of a child as an excuse to try to further their agenda?

The nobles, that’s who.

Other than that, the two weeks preceding the picnic were busy, but a good kind of busy. Elijah was clingier than before, jealous of Fenrir, whom Adetta gave a lot of attention—the boy was malnourished, physically and mentally exhausted, scared and, as was beginning to be a pattern with otherwise scarred children—only really trusted her. But they managed to get him on a road to recovery relatively quickly with Penelope’s nature-based healing magic. Physically at least.

Adetta was the only one he actually listened to, as well. If she didn’t tell him to sit down on his ass and rest to recover faster, he would chase down the housekeep and demand they teach him to work.

It was cute he was eager to help and earn his keep in the mansion, but could he please just rest for another week or two so that she could feed him some more calcium and not fret his bird-bones would break each time he tried lifting something heavy?

Also, he was six. There was no need for him to take all the housekeep duties seriously yet. Or at all.

(But try telling Fenrir that.)

Her birthday comes and goes, in howling wind and thunderstorms that startle Elijah straight into her lap. There’s a velvet cake that was made by the cooks, who were little more than glorified hands Adetta used. She had to walk them through every step, and they made it, although she had to do some patisserie math gymnastics in order to work around lack of red dye and baking soda, and the oldschool equipment in general.

(The answer was beet juice and dried hibiscus leaves. Also, these were times when usage of Baker’s Ammonia was widespread. It wasn’t a half-bad substitute for the baking soda.)

Nobody even asked why Adetta knew how to make this cake. She wasn’t sure whether she felt flattered by their acceptance of everything her, or offended that they just got used to her weird.

Nobody ever asked why she was like this, an adult in a body of a child. Why did she know things others didn’t, or things she wasn’t supposed to. Why she hardly behaved like a young child, and more like everyone’s disgruntled elder sister. How could she just sit down and do the work she was assigned to without complaining, how she was able to spot and point out mistakes her father made in paperwork.

Maybe they just thought it was her normal, since she always behaved like that. Maybe they knew something (her mother did, absolutely, or Adetta would eat her shoes), maybe they didn’t care as long as she was happy and healthy.

It made her tantrums, when she finally deigned to act her age, so much more powerful.

No, really, it sent people into actual panic.

(Was Adetta a bad person to say it amused her, seeing the housekeep and her parents both freaking out over her screaming at someone over something?

It only happened twice, though, if she remembered right. She was more of a ‘cold, stewing fury and scathing remarks that make people cry’ type of person, and even that was rare, since she avoided getting angry as much as she could.)

♦►☼◄♦

When they were all done cutting and eating the cake, and the housekeep started cleaning, Penelope pulled Adetta to the side and have her thin, long box with a wink.

Inside was a rather plain-looking dagger, with a handle wrapped in black leather and straight, sturdy blade made of folded Damascus steel—rare and expensive in this day and age in Sheothia, and, probably, the best metal this world currently had. It was big for an eight-year-old child, more a shortsword than a dagger with unadorned guard.

There was something truly elegant in its monochrome simplicity and raw functionality.

“I knew you’d like it,” Penelope smiles. “As much as it annoys me, we do have rogue blood in our veins. I quite like a good dagger myself.”

“Rogue blood?”

“Your grandfather is still around and kicking, he might pay you a visit sometime before the Winter Ball.”

“But the Winter Ball is still over a year away, mother. It’s a debut for nine-year-olds, I’m eight.”

“My father is an unpredictable man, remember that.”

“Okay, fine, I won’t ask, I know you won’t answer anyway.”

“Smart girl.”

“Can I get a sword?”

“Ask your father. But why?”

“No particular reason, I just think I’d like collecting blades. You know, a hobby outside books. It helps that it’s a hobby I can stab people with.”

Penelope laughs and pats Adetta’s head.

♦►☼◄♦

The weather was perfect. None of the scorching summer heat, but the air wasn’t quite full of the autumn chill yet. The trees, with their branches gently swaying on the last gusts of the warm wind, were growing progressively more and more into the kaleidoscope of red.

The place they picked as a picnic spot was on the very edge of their territory, and it has actually taken them half a day in the carriage to get there. It was some ways away from a small town where they would spend the night before returning, where the neighboring Marques was also suspiciously present in that time, as if just to meet the Bellvilles. It was a picturesque scenery all around, all hills and forests and lakes, and no signs of human influence in sight, except for dilapidated stone ruins on a hill they were going towards.

Well, ruins. Stone foundation and a bit of a wall, nearly completely swallowed by greenery. The thing was more than forty years old, destroyed in the last war that ended before her father was even born.

(Don’t think about war. Don’t think about plague. Don’t think about elven prince dying in the woods sometime around your birthday, perhaps even right now, or tomorrow, or yesterday. Don’t. Today is your day, not a day to keep fretting. You can’t do anything about it anyway.

Today might be the last day she spends with her family, idly lazing around and being happy.)

It’s the spot her parents knew of—the place where her father proposed no less. It was nice, that they were sharing this spot with their children now.

They put out the blankets and baskets of food and sat down, enjoying the weather. Even the servants were around, on their own blankets with their own food—the maids that Adetta disliked (mutually) were long since… Relocated. The ones that worked in the manor now were, understandably, miffed by their young lady’s mannerisms, but remained friendly, or at the very least professional.

“Adetta, open your mouth,” Elijah says, a piece of roasted meat on his fork. She rolls her eyes at him, but obliges anyway.

“Thanks,” she says, “but I can eat the rest myself.”

“Awww.”

“Do I really look like a toddler to you? You can feed Rosaria if you want.”

They both look to where Rosaria is currently terrorizing maids with custard pudding, seeing her smear the thing all over _everywhere_ and not at all wondering why did Penelope push her youngest onto others for today.

Toddlers.

Other than that, they have fun, and for once, Adetta lets herself act her age, running around with Elijah and Fenrir, and some younger maids, playing tag and hide-and-seek, ruthlessly abusing her wind powers for speed boost. Barely, but she manages to outrun even Fenrir and his Beastfolk physique that makes him naturally stronger and faster than humans.

Beastfolk in the army, or as mercenaries, are quite frightening, with their inhuman battle prowess and keen senses that allow them so sense most danger well ahead of time. Even elves know not to piss off Drokya, the mountain kingdom where most Beastfolk live. However, unlike humans, they respect them. Humans, if they find anything non-human that’s not nobility, will ridicule and curse that person, treating them like trash.

Humans, what a wonderful race.

(Adetta sometimes wishes they’d all die. The world would certainly be better for it, and there are other races just as capable of keeping elves’ egomania in check as them.)

Fantasy Racism was a can of worms Adetta didn’t like opening, but sometimes one had to. As much as her father employed a no-tolerance policy against racism, some bad apples persisted, such as the Mayor’s son, and situations like that of Fenrir’s were much more common all over the country than Adetta would have liked. Most nobles were stuck-up assholes with a prideful streak a mile wide. She really hated those elitist, supremacist, often sexist swines.

Some were already raising their voices as to why Adetta wasn’t engaged yet, because how can a woman do anything without a man?

(She was going to show them. By the gods, she was going to fucking show them. They were only screaming because they didn’t know who’d be the next Archduke yet, to start licking his boots young.

Adetta. The next Archduke was Adetta, and only her.

Call it a new-year resolution, even if the year wouldn’t change for some months yet. A birthday resolution?)

♦►☼◄♦

When the noon passed but it wasn’t quite evening, Adetta declared that she’s going into the forest, picked up a basked, threw in one of the white sheets, few bottles of water and a stray sandwich, and started resolutely marching towards the woods. Penelope didn’t even move, just smiled, and Crawforde sighed, messing his hair before throwing a ‘just be careful!’ after her. Elijah took one look at them and threw himself after her, and so did Fenrir.

“Adetta-“

“Milady-“

“No,” she stops them. “It’s my birthday picnic, and I’m bored, and I want to go to the forest to look for some herbs and fungi I can later use. You can come with, but don’t try to stop me.”

“Herbs?” Fenrir asks, ears perking up.

“Yes,” she says and looks at the sky. “So we’re going north, and back we’ll be going south. Okay. Let’s go.”

♦►☼◄♦

“What’s this?”

“Chamomile. It’s good for tea.”

“And this?”

“Oregano. It’s tasty in salads, and makes good spice.”

“And this one?”

“Belladonna.”

“Elijah, hand’s off the plant. It’s poisonous, don’t touch it. You too, Fenrir.”

“No, I’m fine, it smells bad.”

“Good.”

“Belladonna is poisonous?”

“Yes, Eli. It’s also called Deadly Nightshade, and for a good reason.”

“Oh. I thought- Like, women used it for tonics?”

“Yeah, no, that shit toxic as seven hells. Those tonics cause blindness.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. And if you ate even few berries, you’d die.”

“Really?!”

“Didn’t I just say that? Even an adult would die after eating, like, five.”

“Five. As in, singular five berries?”

“Yes. As I said, don’t touch it. Now, there’s a rosemary patch down there, help me pick it.”

“This is all very interesting.”

“I can give you some of the herbal books after you’ve learned to read, Fenrir.”

“I’d love that!”

“Now, was it just me, or did I smell spearmint around?”

“Finish picking your rosemary first!”

♦►☼◄♦

They run around the forest for good two hours, and the sun is finally starting to head towards the west, so it’s time to head back. The boys are properly amazed with her knowledge of herbs, and she’s glad that her devouring herbal journals for past two weeks paid off. She has a basket full of herbs she’s going to dry and use, and she’s quite happy with how the day went today. They head south, so the setting sun is somewhere on their right as they treat through the thicket in companionable silence, listening to birds and trying not to trip on the branches.

They’re definitely beyond the Bellville territory now, but it’ll take them maybe twenty minutes their pace to get back to the picnic site.

Fenrir suddenly stops, grabbing both Elijah and Adetta by the hand. He looks around, then sniffs, and suddenly his ears flatten right to his skull, and he lets out a low whimper, half-hiding behind them.

“Fenrir?” Adetta asks, turning to him. “Fenrir, what’s wrong?”

“It’s the bad smell.”

“What bad smell?”

“The sticky red that flows out of people when they got cut. A lot of it.”

Blood, then. It could be an animal. It could be something else. Adetta, of course, makes a decision contrary to common sense and very much aligned with curiosity.

“Can you lead us there?”

“Adetta, are you crazy?” Elijah hisses, grabbing her by the arm. “What if it’s a prey of something big? What if something dangerous is there? Anything could be in these forests, wolves, bears, monsters!”

“I can’t hear anything around, though,” Fenrir says. “Nothing, you know- Just birds and wind.”

“Yet,” Elijah says, narrowing his eyes.

“We’re going to check,” Adetta tells them as if it’s already decided. For her, it is. “Fenrir, listen for animals.”

“Of course!”

“Adetta! Why are you always like this, it might be dangerous!”

“You’re free to go back, Eli, just keep heading south,” she tells him, moving forward despite his grip. He sighs, defeated—it’s not like he can stop her, anyway, might as well go try to do damage control—and follows. It doesn’t take them even a minute for Adetta’s and Elijah’s human noses to pick up the heavy, thick, metallic odor of blood, cutting through the fresh-green-wet scent of the forest, cutting through the summer air like a lightning through a night sky. Elijah trembles behind them, not supportive of the idea at all, Fenrir wildly uncomfortable, but both unwilling to leave her alone while she satiates her curiosity.

Then they stumble upon him—a man, tall, probably, Adetta didn’t know with how he was lying propped against a tree, not quite in a puddle of his own blood, but it was steadily forming, painting the grass red. He was not conscious at all, with skin that probably used to be caramel-colored once, maybe, but was ashen with blood loss, and his pale blonde hair sticky with red.

His shirt was of peculiar cut, but Adetta didn’t quite care—two arrows were sticking from his chest, one from his shoulder and another from his abdomen, and the blood seeping from the wounds already dyed the front of his shirt red, despite it originally being deep green. His chest moved, but Adetta had to strain to actually see it rise.

“Is he dead?” Elijah asks, frightened but morbidly curious while Fenrir cowered behind, torn between running away and running towards the man. Adetta was about to answer, but the man coughed rather violently, startling a whine from her brother, a yelp from Fenrir and a wince from her. He was alive, alright, and right now he was even looking at them, three confused kids in the middle of the forest that stumbled upon a half-corpse.

He had the most startling, beautiful violet eyes Adetta has ever seen—they shone like two amethysts, glimpses of life fading from them ever so slowly. And fear. The man was afraid. He was dying, he knew it, and he was scared of it.

“He’s not dead,” she says resolutely, steeling herself. “But he will be if we won’t do something about it.”

“What can we even do?!” Elijah asks, startled, but Adetta doesn’t turn away from the man. He closes his eyes again, too tired to retain consciousness.

“We try to stop the bleeding first, and one of us runs to get mother, and maybe father,” she says resolutely. “Fenrir, can you run back to them and tell them what we found?”

“But, milady-“

“You’ll be able to get out the fastest with your nose, and get them back here, too. Please, Fenrir. Elijah and I will try to stop the bleeding, just go. Be quick. Remember, south, sun at the right hand. Go!”

“I- Yes, milady. I will- I will be right back.”

And with that, he’s off. Elijah turns to her, as she approaches the man.

“What now?”

“We try to stop the bleeding,” she says, as she sets down the picnic basket filled with herbs and remaining food. She pulls out two remaining water bottles and gives them to Elijah. “I will snap the arrows so that just the arrowheads are left, and try to immobilize them so that they don’t move in the wounds. You focus on treating his abdomen with magic, see what you can do if anything.”

Elijah gulps, and nods shakily. Healing papercuts and bruises is one thing—attempting to stop an internal bleeding in a place so vital and complicated as the abdomen? Gods-

Adetta puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We need to keep him alive until Mother gets here. I believe in you.”

He nods, determined.

They move him, as delicately as they can with their tiny bodies, to lay flatly on the red-soaked ground. Once he’s safely on level ground, Adetta uses small, concentrated gusts of wind to snap the wooden shafts of both arrows to manageable length but still long enough to freely grab a hold of, and tears the white sheet they had in the basket to more manageable, but still rather big pieces.

“Here, put this on the wound, don’t press too much on the arrow, just around it, and it gets too soaked, put a new one on top, don’t peel off the old one, okay?”

“Okay, okay- Okay,” Elijah breathes, uncorks the water bottle, focuses, and prays for a miracle.

♦►☼◄♦

By the time Penelope arrives, effortlessly gliding through the thicket next to the breathless Crawforde and a wheezing Fenrir, Elijah’s hands are sticky with blood, but the blood flow has lessened, and Adetta has managed to find some yarrow, grind it between her finders, and apply to the man’s shoulder wound to attempt the same. It worked. Kind of.

“Yarrow?” Penelope asks, leaning over the children and the man, completely unruffled as if she didn’t keep up with Fenrir and Crawforde at all, but instead took a light stroll through the woods.

“It stops the bleeding, but his blood-“ Adetta starts, removing her palm, dirty with thinned, red blood. “It’s too thin, it doesn’t clot properly. I think it’s poisoned.”

“Oh, it’s definitely poisoned,” she says, after tasting the blood. Because it’s a thing she does, apparently, and it explains a lot in everyone’s treatment of Adetta’s oddities. “Move, children.”

They do, and she kneels down by the man, in the bloodied grass, completely uncaring of the blood pooled under. His breathing is even shallower than before now, but Elijah’s efforts were not in vain, and the abdominal wound doesn’t bleed nearly as much as it used to.

Penelope puts her hands on him, one on each wound, closes her eyes, and concentrates.

As a nature-wielding, classified healer, she doesn’t quite need foci, like Elijah with water. The more raw nature surrounds her, the more powerful magic she can channel, and right now, they’re in the middle of a forest. The magic forces the arrows straight out of the wounds, as the flesh closes behind in a rather gruesome way. It only leaves thin, pale scars behind, and the man’s face visibly relaxes.

“I did what I could,” Penelope says, having barely broken a sweat and Adetta is once more reminded that her mother is the one in the household not to be trifled with. “His wounds are still very delicate, and he still has rather severe anaemia. Crawforde, love, carry him back, we need to warm him up rather quickly.”

“I foresee a lot of liver and spinach in the near future,” Adetta says, and Penelope hums in agreement.

“And other things, but he has to survive the night and return home first.”

“And you want me to carry him,” Crawforde asks, looking unhapilly at all the blood.

“Yes,” says Adetta at the exact same moment as Penelope. They look at each other and smile, both with bloodied hands and fronts of their skirts, and Crawforde sighs, but obediently picks the man up bridal-style, as if he weighted nothing and wasn’t at all taller than Adetta’s father, or a mass of lean muscle. The blonde’s head rolled against Crawforde’s shoulder, finally resting in the crook of the man’s neck, as his whole body remained limp with blood loss and lack of awareness.

“Hey,” Crawforde says conversationally, carrying the man through the woods. “Did you notice that he’s an elf?”

Adetta stops for a moment, blinks, and then shakes her head and resumes walking.

_No, that’s not possible._

__


	6. [Regalis], a resource pack.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a chapter, but something I did because I don't have a chapter and I'm leaving for the weekend.

Hi, today I’m here to present to you a (semi) comprehensive guide to Regalis characters, because I don’t have a chapter and I’m leaving for the weekend. There were concerns raised about Adetta’s pansexuality (which she is, for those who don’t know) because she’s surrounded by exclusively males, no matter how feminine wouldn’t they be. Let me address these concerns by throwing at you Blanche and Lillith, Adetta’s first, and only, female friends.

In the Original Timeline, Blanche was friend/background for the Heroine. In this one, Adetta befriends her. Lillith, on the other hand, was originally embittered due to the death of both her siblings in war, and part of OG Adelia’s entourage. She’s not embittered anymore, obviously. Also, she doesn’t like boys. Like, at all.

Also featuring the parents, or at least those of Adetta’s and Capture Targets, since they, too, play a part in Adetta’s life, be it bigger or smaller.

Also, more characters;

<https://sta.sh/21gidg1vyaxu?edit=1>

 

 

**[Regalis] – Advanced Resource Pack**

I wish I were joking. I really do. And yet, this is what I spend my time on. Making family trees for the characters of [Regalis] 70% of which are people who will get a mention at best. Do I hate myself yet? Why yes, I do.

A bit of a legend; in the family trees, a gray dot on the bottom right of the portrait means the person is deceased. A surprisingly low amount of them is.

If their name is just ‘???’, then it either means it’s unknown (Fenrir’s mom) or that I don’t want you to know yet, because plot (everyone else).

 

 

 

In case pictures don't work quite well: <https://sta.sh/21yf4o1ex9pw?edit=1>

 

Among more entertaining facts;

**Bellvilles:**

\- The Bellvilles are Archducal family, Langtons are Viscount family, Seraphinia da Ville was a Baroness, and Maverick Lynx is… Just Maverick Lynx.

\- Adetta’s grandma is alive, well and kicking, and yes, Penny and Maverick know exactly where she’s at. Crawforde long since gave up on asking. (There’s a big plot coming in about her, huhu.)

\- Maximus (Crawforde’s grandfather) and Bartholomew (Bakari’s adoptive father) were more/less in the same generation/age group, and were friends. They fought together on many fronts, but only Barty died of old age. Maximus fell in battle.

\- Alden was an albino, and also one of more important generals of his tenure. He died shortly after Crawforde and Penelope married. His wife, Vivian, outlived him by about a year, out of sheer stubbornness, allowing herself to die only after Adetta’s birth.

\- The Langtons were Viscounts, and despite Elijah currently going under Bellville, by law he’s still a Langton, as well as heir Langton. Crawforde is currently managing his assets for him, poor overworked dad.

\- Nobody knows what Maverick Lynx is. Just a dashing rogue? A runaway prince? A fallen-from-grace noble? A Robin Hood wannabe? Nobody knows. Nobody will know, probably.

**Sinclairs/Cortynghins:**

\- Sinclairs are the Royal Family of Sheothia, while the Cortynghins are the family that long attained a separate status of ‘Mages’ due to their steadily high magical proficiency through the generations. Curtis Wyatt is a wealthy merchant.

\- Scarlett is not only sort of an illegitimate child, she has two elder half-sisters, one brother in law, two nephews and a niece.

\- Asher is an adopted brother of Amelia, but through him, Noah, Alastair and Chantal are technically related.

\- Scarlett and Penny are really good friends. It’s partly because their mothers also were; situation with Trisha is very much similar to that with Morgan because they were both in on it.

\- Curtis and Ethel have an on-and-off relationship that they both claim is with no strings attached, but when they actually get together with Noah, it’s hard to see them as anything else than a family unit. Curtis and Ethel always eventually get back with eachother.

**Heroine’s Family:**

\- Rothchesters are Barons, while the Higginses are commonfolk.

\- Sally’s an illegitimate daughter of a Baron. The Rothchesters know about her, and aren’t too fond of her.

\- Sally has a legitimate half-sister, older than her by three months.

\- Veronica died in the Original Timeline, as another of the victims of the plague.

\- I have no idea if I’m going to make Veronica part of Adetta’s friend circle, but it’s entirely possible that I will. As for now, she’s not the part of the plans, but then, Elijah being good at healing also wasn’t and yet, here we are.

**Galashiels:**

\- The Galashiels are Earls.

\- Bakari is a mercenary who came from far southeast, and had proven himself to be a great warrior. A heirless Bartholomew decided to adopt him in his twilight years.

\- Emeralda used to be a very notorious assassin, but her last assignment nearly killed her, costing her whole left leg and left eye. She’s been content to manage the Galashiels estate since.

\- Emeralda also looks like she’s related to Bartholomew. Coincidence? Lol I have no idea.

**Alytharion:**

\- The Alytharion line is the Royal Family of Ifa Nalore.

\- Elves are matriarchal, and high-class women tend to have more than one husband. How many depends on how well the family is off. Same with children.

\- Darshee is the current Queen of the Elves, after the death of her mother, Shalendra, in the war thirty years ago.

\- Shelor is a spitting image of his grandfather, Luthias.

**Sherriden:**

\- Sherridens are Earls. Eleanor used to be wealthy merchant’s daughter, and Christopher is a third son of impoverished Baron who took up knighthood.

\- Eleanor was a merchant’s daughter forced into loveless marriage with an impoverished Earl to help his financial problems. When her husband was off wasting money, she was at home, working hard to manage the business. She’s the only reason the Sherriden family didn’t fall from grace.

\- None of Eleanor’s children are her husband’s. She has had a long-reaching romance with her childhood friend and knight, Christopher.

\- Eleanor and Christopher eventually killed Horace, both tired of him. They didn’t tell their children.

\- Their children actually helped them out with killing Horace. They didn’t tell their parents.

\- Eleanor kept the Sherriden Earldom for herself and her children, deciding that, after dragging it out of poverty with only her hard work, she deserved it.

**von Bexley:**

\- von Bexley is a Ducal house.

\- Sterling von Bexley is known for two things; his mountainous territory that continually yields high quality wool, cheese, and timber, as well as having five daughters and not a single son.

\- Ophelia von Bexley, the eldest sister, is ten years older than Blanche, the youngest.

\- Blanche attends the Regalis Academy in the same year as Adetta, Gianna is two years above her and Yasmina and Mirabelle are in their last year.

 

**Additional feature; Ask the cast!**

You can now ask the cast members questions (only the named ones) and I will do my best to answer in the next chapter.


	7. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, the chapter, as always, beta'd for you by Magikarp Karp. Thanks!  
> (Holidays are killing me. The lack of productivity and routine is killing me. I'm killing me. I'm the worst.)
> 
> Today's warnings: outside of a ridiculous Deus-Ex Machina pulled straight out of Isekai Protagonist's ass, none.
> 
> The song is 'Wanderer's Lullaby' by Adriana Figueroa

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter four•

_Girl has a talk. Girl gets home. Girl blurts out the darnedest things._

•••

* * *

 

They make their way back with a two-day slide, due to the unforeseen wounded elf they found in the forest. Technically, they could have just have gone back the very next day, but Penelope wanted to keep the man in a stable bed for a while more and get some food and water into him, to get his energy levels somewhat up. Mostly iron-rich foods, and vitamin K, which meant a lot of liver and spinach, because those were the most readily available.

Anaemia wasn’t fun, warfarin poisoning even less so, and Adetta was not on the receiving end of the treatment, but she’d die happy if she never saw a liver dish or spinach ever again—even if all the man could ingest was a disgusting-looking, foul-smelling paste that tasted like iron and meat.

(Cooked liver had this characteristic stench, and whether it was Mary or Adetta, it made her gag.)

They still had no idea who the elf was; he was rarely conscious, feverish, and cold. Also, probably because they were the ones who saved his life, if either Adetta, or Elijah, or both, weren’t in the room with him in the case he woke up, he was prone to flying into a panic attack and wouldn’t calm down until he either passed out or one of the kids came in.

It was understandable, as he was very weak, probably delirious, and most likely associated them with his current continuous survival.

His flying into an agitated state after such severe blood loss was a really bad thing, so Adetta just moved to the room he was in and slept the second night in the armchair. When she woke up, Elijah and Fenrir were sleeping on the floor by the chair, in a nest of pillows and blankets, and she had a bad neck cramp. The elf woke shortly after, still tired and maybe a bit delirious, but when she handed him a glass of water he looked at her, drank it, and laid back down.

He actually slept that time, instead of just passing out.

Slowly, his skin started to colour back into darkish caramel from the previous pale-ashen. Or maybe that was Adetta’s wishful thinking, he still overall looked like shit.

(Maybe she just didn’t want another person to emotionally depend on her—two were enough, thank you. She really wasn’t getting paid enough for this.)

Adetta, Elijah and Fenrir ride with the elf in the carriage, whole way back. Penelope told them that he’s stable enough that he will manage few hours without her constant care, and he should sleep through the thing anyway. Rosaria insists she rides with them, and for a moment Adetta isn’t sure how in the actual seven hells is the man supposed to rest in a carriage with a toddler, one small child and two only slightly bigger children, but then she remembers she took some fairy-tale books to kill time during the ride, so she cracks one open and reads it aloud until her throat can’t handle any more speaking. She reads fluently, which would have completely pretty normal were she still Mary in modern world, but has her called prodigy in the late medieval/renaissance of the setting of [Regalis]. But thanks to her fluency, she doesn’t stumble, and her voice lulls all the others into sleep

The fairy tales of this world are conveniently almost exactly the same as those of her old world. Of course, there are also less child-friendly versions, as if straight out of Brother’s Grimm, and Adetta read them, but that was at her own discretion.

She sighs, closing the book, and looks up. She startles a bit, when she meets the amethyst-purple gaze directed straight at her, half-tired and half-curious. Everyone else is asleep but her and the elf, who’s fully and well immobilized with exhaustion and anaemia and should be sleeping most of them all.

Adetta tells him as much.

“You should be sleeping and getting stronger, you know. We didn’t save you for you to not get better.”

He smiles, a small and tired thing, somewhere between smug, cocky, and very tired. What Adetta didn’t expect, was an actual, verbal answer.

“I am getting better,” he tells her, voice raspy from disuse for past few days, and the girl visibly startles. His smile only grows, now more amused and teasing than anything. “Where are we going?”

Oh, right, he probably has no idea who they are, other than that he’s in Sheothia and they’re human.

Adetta kind-of wants to bang her hand on the carriage’s floor. Even the smartest people do the dumbest things sometimes, and she was far from being the smartest.

“I’m Adelia Bellville, but you can call me Adetta,” she introduces herself, name, house, and nickname. Because she saved his life and ruined her dress with his blood, so she might as well share a familial alias. “We’re currently travelling back to the main estate, where you’ll probably do most of your healing. It’s comfortable there, not a lot of prying eyes.”

The elf hums, closing his eyes for a moment.

“I’ve been told to be wary of Bellvilles,” he tells her eventually, and Adetta startles again.

“H-how so?” she asks in confusion.

“Not Bellvilles per say,” he clarifies. “Just the woman with pink eyes that married into them, and all the children she birthed.”

Which, obviously, included Adetta, who was growing more and more confused, and a little bit scared.

“But then, so was I warned against the queen with red hair, and her children.”

That would mean queen Scarlett, mother of Alastair and Chantal, and by extension, them.

“What the fuck,” said Adetta softly but with a lot of emotion, putting all her confusion into one simple sentence. “Why?”

The elf just smiles again, but all he says is an elusive; “you will learn eventually. It’s not my place to say.”

For the next few minutes, she just stares at him intensely, to the point where it makes him uneasy. Serve him right, for dropping such a cryptic bombshell and no more information. Adetta knew that her mother was more than a little dangerous, with a lot of secrets and probably a closet full of corpses, but to the point that elven royalty was warned about her?

And the queen of the nation, mother of the Capture Target, and Penelope’s friend, was also implicated in whatever that was?

Adetta hated it, the long-reading web of secrets. She’d like all the answers yesterday, please.

What fucker. Didn’t even introduce himself, and already gave her a mystery.

(But were the elves wary of what Penelope could do, or of offending her? How did it factor in her joining forces with them in Original Timeline after OG Adelia’s death?)

“You didn’t introduce yourself,” Adetta tells him petulantly, stomping the mystery down into some corner of her mind for the time being. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Oh, apologies, my lady,” he chuckles. It’s weak and raspy, but he doesn’t seem painful from it, which indicates that his abdomen was healed well. “I’m Shelor Alytharion, third prince of Ifa Nalore.”

“Oh,” Adetta blinks. “Okay.”

They look at one another for a moment, and then her mind comes to a halting screech.

And then it clicks.

Shelor Alytharion. Elven prince, found dead on Sheothia’s grounds. The guilt of his death shifted onto humans, a convenient pretext for Ifa Nalore to march to war with Sheothia—a war that would last seven years and devastate both countries so much so that, eventually, wracked with famine and plague, they would come to an uneasy, shaky truce.

One great war caused by the death of Shelor.

Shelor, who was weak, grumpy, and tired, but alive in their carriage.

The war that was caused by a death that **did not happen this time around**.

_And it was all Adetta’s doing._

“I did not say it yet,” Shelor starts, ripping the girl out of her thoughts, “but I am grateful for you finding and saving me. Had I died, Ifa Nalore would have made it a pretext for war, most definitely, and it wouldn’t end well for anyone. Not to tempt the evils, but- I think you might have just prevented a devastating war with your actions.”

 _Oh well_ , Adetta thought. _It sounds about right. It’s the type of shit Isekai protagonists **do**._

“That’s… Fortunate,” she says carefully, because otherwise she might just scream at the ridiculous Deus Ex Protagonist her life just pulled on her—that she was, unwittingly, responsible for. “You’re, uh, you’re welcome. I guess.”

“Oh? You seem spooked,” he says.

 _Shit,_ Adetta thinks, _fuck, he noticed. Of course he fucking noticed._

“I’m just… I’m just thinking what would have happened if we didn’t stumble upon you,” she tells him, a quick save and it’s not even a lie. “It would have been… Bad.”

“A young child should not be concerned with such things.”

“A young child would be concerned with such things if someone close to them died because of it,” she snaps back, looking, not so discreetly, at the tiny blonde toddler snoozing in Elijah’s lap. Shelor’s eyes follow the directory of her gaze, and he hums.

“Are you perchance graced with prophetic dreams?”

Adetta jumps a little and snaps her head to look at him, eyes wide and body frozen like a deer in the headlights, because he hit much too close to home.

“Don’t worry, I won’t press,” he placates. “Precognition is unreliable at best and constantly changes until it becomes a fixed past. That’s why all big oracles are taken, while seriously, with a grain of salt. Even the smallest, seemingly inconsequential action can bring about huge changes.”

(Like being nice to her stepbrother. Like going with her father to the town and saving Fenrir via sheer dumb luck.

Like three children going into the forest to gather herbs, and stumbling upon a dying man, who isn’t even a simple man, but-)

Adetta looks at him, searching, and his eyes are earnest, if tired. She nods, satisfied.

“Then go to sleep,” she orders him. “You must have exhausted yourself with this talk anyway.”

“Don’t order me around, I’m a prince,” Shelor huffs.

“I’m going to do whatever I want, I’m a spoiled, rich noble girl and you kind-of fucked up my birthday picnic.”

“Oh,” he blinks. “Happy birthday, then, but it’s not my fault you stumbled on me.”

She rolls her eyes at him with a huff, and he chuckles. He’s right, of course, it’s nobody’s fault but Adetta who followed the stench of blood like a person with no self-preservation instincts she secretly is. But it worked out well, in the end, didn’t it? It usually did.

“I can’t sleep anymore, though. I’m still exhausted, but I’m restless. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to-“

“Do you want me to sing you to sleep?” Adetta asks, because it’s not the first, or last time she would. Shelor blinks at her, seems to consider it for a bit, then shrugs and nods. She hums, kind of surprised that a grown man—an elf, no less, and they reached maturity at a hundred and twenty—would even want an eight-year-old human brat sing him to sleep, but who she was to back out now. She proposed that to begin with.

She takes a breath and thinks for a moment—does she even know anything appropriate for now? She’s not going to sing lullaby for the stormy night in the middle of a sunny day.

But no, there’s one, thankfully.

 

> _Wandering child of the earth_
> 
> _Do you know just how much you're worth?_
> 
> _You have walked this path since your birth_
> 
> _You were destined for more_
> 
> _There are those who'll tell you you're wrong_
> 
> _They will try to to silence your song_
> 
> _But right here is where you belong_
> 
> _So don't search anymore_
> 
> _You are the dawn of a new day that's waking_
> 
> _A masterpiece still in the making_
> 
> _The blue in an ocean of grey_
> 
> _You are right where you need to be_
> 
> _Poised to inspire and to succeed_
> 
> _You'll look back and you'll realize one day_
> 
> _In your eyes there is doubt_
> 
> _As you try to figure it out_
> 
> _But that's not what life is about_
> 
> _So have faith there's a way_
> 
> _Though the world may try to define you_
> 
> _It can't take the light that's inside you_
> 
> _So don't you dare try to hide_
> 
> _Let your fears fade away_

_  
_

Shelor keeps looking at her, and it’s kind of unnerving but also kind of fascinating to see consciousness gradually slip from his gaze, as his eyelids close and body relaxes. The kids also shift, Elijak moving his legs in Fenrir’s lap and turning his head so that it bumps Adetta’s thigh.

Rosaria opens her eyes blearily and yawns, and lets her head fall back onto Elijah’s chest.

 

> _You are the dawn of a new day that's waking_
> 
> _A masterpiece still in the making_
> 
> _The blue in an ocean of grey_
> 
> _You are right where you need to be_
> 
> _Poised to inspire and to succeed_
> 
> _You'll look back and you'll realize one day_
> 
> _You are the dawn of a new day that's waking_
> 
> _A masterpiece still in the making_
> 
> _The blue in an ocean of grey_
> 
> _You are right where you need to be_
> 
> _Poised to inspire and to succeed_
> 
> _Soon you'll finally find your own way_
> 
> _  
> _

He closes his eyes, shifts a bit under the blanket, and the exhaustion finally knocks him out, leaving Adetta alone to collect her screaming thoughts in peace.

She quite possibly just prevented the war that served as the background to the most of the plot of the game, and ninety-percent of the future of the world she knew.

What the fuck.

Rosaria sleep-crawls onto her lap, and Adetta sighs, making herself comfortable, and decides to also nap a little. There was little else to do, and the only other alternative, really, was a migraine.

♦►☼◄♦

She only wakes after they’ve arrived, hours later, with a mean cramp in the area of her neck and shoulders that will probably take days to get out. It’s her mother who shakes her awake, and the carriage is immobile already. All the other children are already awake, and have been for a while judging by their fairly aware expressions.

They didn’t wake her up, because it wasn’t a thing that one did, unless one was Penelope, and, quite probably, capable of bitch-slapping literal gods with a serene smile. The sun was up in the sky, but quickly falling down to the western horizon, painting reddening Bellville gardens progressively more autumn than they actually were.

Adetta yawns, stretching, and winces at the neck cramp, cursing sleeping in sitting position propped against the wooden frame, but she gets up nonetheless. She pats Fenrir on the head, immediately setting his tail off, then Rosaria, Elijah who reddens, and even Penelope, who just huffs in amusement, and then she jumps down, foregoing the carriage steps. Crawforde climbs into the carriage once it’s vacated, and soon gets back out, this time with semi-awake, blanket-wrapped Shelor in his arms.

“That looks hot as fuck,” Adetta says before she can stop herself, because her sleep-addled brain is more raw Mary than the mindset of Adetta, and she stills. Crawforde does, too, and he goes very, very red on the face. A second of tense silence passes, and suddenly Penelope is straight-up cackling, wild and unladylike but very amused and appreciative. Crawforde still stands by the carriage door, elf in his arms, the man beet-red, spluttering, and shocked, and Shelor has hidden his face in Crawforde’s shoulder, shaking with something that could be amusement as much as exasperation. Someone that sounds a lot like Elijah groans in the background, and she hears the tell-tale slap of a palm hitting a forehead.

Mary was a shameless fujoshi, so sue her, it was one of few joys in her life.

(And Crawforde—tall, handsome, blue-eyed, blonde, princelike—looked very much shippable with Shelor—also tall, also handsome, but elf on top of that, with long platinum hair and vibrantly amethyst eyes. One caring, one in need of care-

Okay, okay, stop, no. We’re not going there, Adetta, get your shit together. This is your father you’re trying to make gay in this scenario, and it would end up either with murder or a threesome, because with Penelope it really was a coin toss, and that was not something she was willing to imagine.

Thanks no thanks, brain. Can the ground open up and swallow her right about now, please?)

“A-Adetta-“ her father tries but she just, against all logic and her screaming mind, continues the narrative.

“What? Two good-looking men kissing is hot.”

Penelope began laughing so hard she started wheezing, and some maids approached her in concern. Elijah has squatted on the ground, face hidden in his hands, and Fenrir was patting his shoulder in a rare show of companionship between the two. Adetta was the oddest person the boy knew; one second, a perfect, standoffish, dainty lady who would absolutely never hesitate to stab a person, and just generally a responsible, mature person in the group, and then he turns around, and suddenly—this.

He was a child, sure, but he was old and aware enough to know very much what she meant.

She was the worst.

( _He loved her anyway_.)

♦►☼◄♦

After sleeping for the few good hours in the carriage, Adetta is kind of worried on how to make the other kids go to sleep during the actual night—and herself, too, while she’s at it. Children’s bodies, she rediscovered, were full of pent-up energy, and as much as Mary could just sit in one place pretty much the whole day, Adetta would have gone stir-crazy.

And so she proposes a weird combination of hide-and-seek and tag for the four of them to play. She, of course, teams with Rosaria—with Adetta’s magic-boosted speed and unexpected turns, even Fenrir has problems catching them, and with Rosaria’s nature magic, even Elijah has problems sensing them.

The boys wise up eventually and come to an uneasy truce to catch them, but by that point Adetta is rather winded, and her legs are starting to hurt, so she lets the boys catch them.

She quickly throws together some sandwiches with leftover ham and fresh herbs she picked in lieu a late dinner and leaves the other kids to be herded to bed while she heads back to her own.

About an hour later Elijah remembers that no, he still can’t sleep without Adetta, and comes to her room and then crawls into her bed. No longer than few minutes after that, Rosaria comes in hand-in-hand with Fenrir, and they do the same.

Adetta just sighs, surrounded by tiny sleeping children like some charm against bad dreams and monsters in the closet, and thinks, until the sleep takes her.

_I could really use a bigger bed. We’re not going to be this small forever._

 

__

Bonus round:

__


	8. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Magikarp Karp.
> 
> As you can see, I am not dead! Well, outside. Yet.
> 
> Today's warnings: Penny and Scarlett being two smug assholes cut of the same cloth who know things but don't feel like sharing. What else is new?

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter five•

_Girl goes to the Capital. Girl meets the queen. Girl encounters even more secrets._

•••

A full week didn’t even pass, and the elves of Ifa Nalore were already yapping about their ‘poor, lost, kidnapped, and potentially dead’ prince. They sent foreword, but they were coming to Sheothia, either to demand the prince be returned, or to forego all niceties and just go straight to declaring a war. The news came to them one morning during the breakfast that Shelor was finally strong enough to actually walk to on his own with only mild assistance, and caused quite a ruckus. Children got restless, Penelope was darkly amused, Crawforde started ripping his hair out and Shelor and Adetta both tried banging their head on the table to see if that helped.

It didn’t, but Adetta did it few more times just in case.

“Is there going to be a war?” Elijah asks, well and truly spooked. Crawforde keeps tugging at his hair, but Shelor raises his head and looks at the boy.

“No,” the elf says, and then turns to Crawforde; “I’d like a carriage to the Capital. The envoys are likely to arrive there within maybe two days, if I’m counting right, and- Ah, fuck, what a fucking mess.”

“Amen,” Adetta mutters, and then sits up very abruptly, eyes glittering. “Mother, I want to go to the Capital!”

“This isn’t a trip-!” Crawforde begins.

“Of course! We can make it a family trip!” Penelope says over him. He looks at her with something between indignation and resignation, and sighs.

“Alright, we can make it a family field trip,” he say, resigned. He knows better than to argue with his wife, especially if it’s not a big thing to begin with.

“I’ve never been to the Capital before,” Elijah says, very eager to turn his attention away from the war-related topic at hand.

“We’re going to go there for next year’s Winter Ball anyway,” Adetta tells him. “Might as well go see a bit now, no?”

“I wanna go to the Winter Ball, too,” Rosaria says from over her carrots, and Penelope shakes her head.

“In six years, darling.”

“But I want!”

“Your siblings had to wait, and so do you. End of discussion.”

“Awww.”

War aside, it was nice knowing that Rosaria couldn’t tantrum her way into getting things just because Adetta got them—she had to either wait, or get them herself, if that was what her sister did. That was, she could tantrum all she wanted, but one disappointed look from Adetta was usually enough to calm her down.

Why was she letting her parents to use her as a disciplining tool for the other children again?

“Alright,” Penelope stands up from the table, a determined glint to her eye. “We will most likely need to go to the Capital no matter what, as Shelors current caretakers. And the children also should, given that they are ones that found him. Not to mention, I just want to see how Adetta deals with all this.”

“Just admit you want her to scare people,” Crawforde sighs, and she smiles down at him.

“Are we going then?”

“Yes, yes, have maids pack your things-“ his gaze falls on Adetta. “Or pack yourselves. It’s a rather dire situation, so do be quick. I know it’s very sudden, but the situation calls for it, so I’d prefer to leave today. We’ll ride into the night, keep that in mind—I still have some documents to look though.”

“I can help you once I’m done packing,” Adetta volunteers, and Crawforde nods.

Adetta proceeded to stuff her face with the breakfast then, for once in her life forgoing manners in excitement, and when she was done, she took off towards her room. Rosaria and Elijah did the same thing, anyway, more than excited to see the Capital. Adetta didn’t particularly care for the Capital itself, but there was one thing certain—the bookstores there were many, and they were much bigger and better stocked than the little provincial store that was funded to begin with by her father for her. The people in this fantasyland had an amazingly high literacy percentile, too. Well over a half of the populace could read and write fluently, and so bookstores and libraries were becoming popular.

Still didn’t beat Ifa Nalore, where, from what Shelor said, literacy rates were somewhere around ‘almost everyone’, and most could speak and read more than one language fluently. Shelor could—after all, he spoke both Elven and Sheothian.

Adetta just really wanted to visit the bookstore. If she had to suffer through stuffy, official meetings to do so, so be it.

♦►☼◄♦

Adetta prided herself in having a family that was unlike other nobles—as in, they were functional and capable of logical thought. This was why they were able to leave relatively fast, mere hours after the arrival of the message. How long would they be staying in the Capital, Adetta didn’t know. What she knew—or, rather, what she learned earlier today—was that they actually had an estate there. The parents just much preferred the provincial life, at least until the children were old enough to start attending parties, which would be next year. Adetta, personally, thought that their trip now would be a good way to see if she wanted to live in the city later.

Very possibly not, but something might change her mind, so she wasn’t so quick to rule it out. While she wasn’t keen on living among the noise and people, Mary did, once upon a time, live in a huge, bustling city, because everything there was on site, conveniently close. She disliked it, but in that crowd, everyone was anonymous unless something was happening. In a world like this, with population of all intelligent creatures not even a quarter of that of twenty-first-century Earth, even the Capital would seem small.

And Adetta, the eldest daughter of the archduke, would surely garner attention.

Yeah, maybe living in the Capital wasn’t that good of an idea after all, if she couldn’t be plain, anonymous Mary. She liked being alone a little too much, and in this day and age, people were a tad too stupid, a tad too righteous and much too old—fashioned for Adetta to want to have anything at all to do with them.

Even Elijah learned that she was much more amendable to his constant company if he left her alone for few solid hours every day, or at least made himself unnoticeable if he was having a particularly bad day and wanted to stay with her no matter what. Rosaria, too, slowly, but she spent a lot of time with Penelope, or with Fenrir, learning to read and write together.

Rosaria was very adamant that she learned to read and write at three, because she heard that Adetta could, too, around that age, the fact of Adetta having an advantage of a life once before lived not mattering at all. If her big sister could do it, so could Rosaria, end of question. Fenrir just wanted to be able to read, seemingly for the sake of it.

And they were making massive progress, both of them. For Fenrir, it was normal—he was six.

Rosaria, however, was three, and could already read simple sentences.

Genius little midget. Adetta was proud.

When they packed themselves into the carriage, Rosaria went in with a small, square, wooden kiddy-book in hands, fully intent on reading the story of Blue Apron—Sheothia’s version Little Red Riding Hood, except in blue and with a bear—all by herself.

Fenrir went with them too, of course, a tiny child that tried very hard to be a proper servant. They even got him a downsized uniform, and even if he wasn’t allowed to do much work yet, he would run after the housekeep and pester them to teach him. It was honestly adorable, when he tried to help Adetta get into the carriage, and she indulged him, even if she could do it herself just fine.

The whole carriage ride took even longer than the one the week before for the picnic, to the outskirts of the territory. It passed rather uneventful—save for Adetta’s retelling of the original, handdrawn Disney movies, one by one, at the insistence of everyone and their dog—and they arrived late into the night. Or, Adetta thought they had, at least because she was half-asleep when Penelope managed to coax her out of the carriage and into a house that looked vaguely like a plus-size renaissance villa to Adetta’s sleep-addled consciousness. The only difference was that the house was surrounded by other buildings, not trees, and she kind-of hated it.

♦►☼◄♦

Waking up in a bed not-yours was a jarring experience for Adetta, and she did not like it at all, especially since she didn’t quite remember how she got there in the first place. It took her a few moments of confusion, further fuelled by distant but very present sounds of _society_ (ugh, disgusting), before she realized that she was no longer at the manor, but instead, at wherever the Bellvilles had their other house in the Capital. It helped that the other kids, as usual, also were sleeping in her bed—which, Adetta noted, was actually bigger than her own. The whole room was bigger. The room itself was grandiose, purple and obviously meant for her, but—as she mentioned, it was grandiose. Marble, gold ornaments, even bloody _pillars_ , type of grandiose. There was no empty space on the walls, taken instead by paintings right on the stone, or sculptures in small inside-shelves, and Adetta hated it. It made her head spin—too much, too gaudy, too… Just too much, kind of in a way a Novae Richie would flash their newfound money.

Adetta thought her parents had more taste than that.

But then, they might have very possibly just hired a person to do this room, few years back, and told him to do it in purple and then they did what they thought a rich and prominent family wanted.

Adetta hoped to find them and yell at them, and then make them fix this gaudy mess.

She stopped, blinked for a while, and then hid her face in her hands. Oh problems of first world rich nobility, how have you warped her?

(It was just a room, she could tear down the gold and repaint it herself. Why on earth would she leave it to others when she was the only one who knew what she truly wanted anyway? It would just end up in a mess again and upset her, and repainting the room by herself could be fun.)

♦►☼◄♦

From what Adetta gathered, the whole Capital, despite being technologically more in mid-late Renaissance than further, actually followed the fashions she knew from the Baroque art period. Or that was what the maids were attempting to wrangle her and Rosaria into.

Face with tight, heavy, immobilizing and downright uncomfortable cage of a dress—complete with a steel frame, no less—Rosaria threw a fit.

Adetta didn’t.

She just calmly threatened people for making her sister cry.

(And for the dress. Her dresses, the ones she had tailors custom-make for her, were much simpler, much more comfortable, and, in her humble opinion, actually prettier. She would always pick her currently favourite, fairly simple Victorian, Gothic and Lolita fashion mashup of a gown with no metal supports or corsets that only took one person to put on over those garish baroque cages. She was merely going more forward with fashion than it already was, after all.

If one needed further affirmation, there was the fact that Penelope took to Adettas dress designs like a fish to water. And if that wasn’t enough, apparently the queen herself inquired about them. Actually, it was good Adetta went to the Capital after all—if Queen Scarlett would like to buy her dress design, she wouldn’t say no. Having private money _just in case_ was always a good thing.)

When the maid showed her a Rococo-esque gown, the one with the ridiculously wide hips, Adetta honestly considered signing the woman up for an exorcism. How could anyone ever consider that monstrosity fashion was beyond her.

Besides, she was eight. Why they were attempting to put a corset on her in the first place? She might consider wearing it, but that would have to wait until she had figure she could try to further outline.

She was in the middle of wrangling with a maid when Penelope strode in, clad in something straight out of prom girl’s wet dream. The dress was pink, of course, because it made Penelope seem slightly less as if she were planning the mass extinction of human race, and with a rather big skirt, but it managed to seem full without any sort of metal supports. It had good few layers, and a lot of embroided flowers—the top and three-quarters sleeves were almost fully covered, and the flowers continued fair bit down the skirt part as well.

Adetta wasn’t even ashamed to admit that the design happened only because she used to spend unholy amount of time on Pinterest as Mary and could recall a lot of dresses.

Dresses aside, Adetta would like to be able to send maids skittering away with just one look, too. Alas, that power was beyond her grip just yet. However, with the maid gone, Adetta could finally wrangle Rosaria into her dress—a rather basic pink Lolita with a lot of frills and laces—and then dress herself up into a dress that looked more like a purple coat, with a skirt with a full, detailed pattern. It was quite long on her eight-year-old body, but that was fine, because Adetta could nonetheless reach an impressive—for a child—speed in this dress without the threat of tripping over the hem of the skirt.

All dresses were custom-made by her design, but price was of no consequence for the Bellvilles. Actually, Adetta was rather proud for having come up with expensive but simple commissions that would ease a lot of their seamstress’ worries for the following months and satiated all of her own comfort and fashion needs.

(Her dresses were still less expensive than those ladies typically wore in Sheothia. And as much easier to actually make as to put on.)

♦►☼◄♦

Sheothia’s Capital, Adetta eventually learned, was called Cainore. It was quite odd that, for the first eight years of her life, she never learned its name—she was aware of a Cainore due to studying geography, but not that it was the Capital—but in her defence, the Capital was just the Capital, and everybody knew what the talk was about. The Capital could have very well been this city’s name, as far as Adetta was concerned, and nothing would change.

The Capital itself however, she found, was—disappointing. Granted, Mary was used to NY, LA, Chicago, Houston being called big cities—metropolitan with population counted in seven digits. With the talk centred around Capital, Adetta kind-of gave it that type of sticker of approval, and consequently, learning that the population within it didn’t even reach a hundred thousand citizens, let alone a million, disappointed her. By standard definition it was merely a town! A large one, sure, but a town nonetheless, and not even a city at all! It needed give-or-take twenty or thirty thousand more citizens to classify as a city.

In hindsight, though, it shouldn’t have disappointed her, not really, since the town was equivalent of that of late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, and expecting it to meet the standards of Mary’s time was unfair.

Crawforde spluttered when she referred to Cainore as a town that morning, but Adetta just deadpanned something along the lines of ‘tell me when it gets thirty thousand more citizens to qualify as more’ and that was that.

♦►☼◄♦

Bellvilles arrive at the palace shortly after breakfast, and while the Ifa Nalore envoys would not arrive until afternoon, and technically the family needn’t have come, Penelope insisted, for once gleeful with this childish innocence, happy to be seeing her friend again. The palace itself was a big, sprawling, white building on a hill, surrounded by gardens and a moat that was more decoration than anything. A big, stone bridge led to it.

Frankly, it looked exactly like Château de Chambord, a renaissance castle from France. Adetta would know, Mary actually visited there during one of her holidays. Better yet, creators of [Regalis] straight-up admitted that it was, indeed, what they were attempting to recreate. Not like she could blame them—up close, the place was massive and very beautiful, regardless of the world it was in.

(Now, thinking of French renaissance castles, she finally remembered what her home reminded her of; Château d’Écouen, albeit a bit downsized. It was smaller than Chambord, but no less extravagant. Frankly, it was more grandiose than the little city villa they had in the Capital. Don’t get her wrong, this one was still a proper, if small, Château, but it didn’t compare to home.)

Also, why the fuck was Sheothia so French? They spoke English here! More archaic version, sure, but English nonetheless! Not that Adetta minded, as long as nobody tried to feed her frogs. (She tried once, never again.)

Well, while the authors of the game were good in making proper, 3D, believable, and likeable characters, it was universally accepted in the community to just not—not poke the hornet’s nest that was their worldbuilding. The creators themselves figured as much, and so, the politics and worldbuilding and all those other things were only mentioned if it was absolutely needed. They took the ‘tell very little’ approach instead of ‘make a world full of plot holes’ approach, and it was appreciated.

However, now it infuriated Adetta. Mainly because she lived in this world now, and if it wasn’t for the history books and politics lesson, she would have been in a really bad spot.

(Nonetheless, she would have very much liked to know why the hell Ifa Nalore so eagerly accepted Penelope in the Original Timeline—especially now, after Shelor told her just how wary of the woman the elves truly were, and what consequences, if any, would that secret thing have in Adetta’s own future.)

She remembers going into Château de Chambord with the tourist group, and everything there was so… Museum-like. Here, lead by a servant, she passed those very same, very similar hall, and the difference was stark. They looked lived-in.

They aren’t received in the throne room, or anything like that. On one hand, Adetta finds it kind-of odd, since what she knows about medieval and the world tells her that their arrival should have more fanfare, as probably the most prominent noble family about, especially once so removed from the Capital. On the other hand, her parents are friends with the royal pair.

They’re received in the king’s study. The man himself is sitting behind the desk, looking at some documents. He looks younger than the scarce CGI’s in the game depicted him, less haggard and just generally happier. Well, this man did not lose his wife and ended up with a crippled, half-insane daughter on top of having to wage a war, so, Adetta supposed, he would look better. He had brown hair, which neither of his children had inherited, and the same, starkly-yellow eyes she was used to from all of Alastair’s CGI’s. They looked even more dangerous in real life, though, those eyes.

The king wasn’t who truly caught her attention, though. Behind the chair, stood a woman. Tall, fair-skinned, in a dark-red dress. Her hair was straight, the same brilliant crimson that Alastair had, but her eyes were frightening. Sharp, amused, scheming, and very red, further accented with kohl she put around them.

Adetta had no idea that the queen’s eyes were red.

What these eyes held, however, was familiar. Scheming amusement and the glint of danger.

No wonder she and Penelope were friends.

“Crawforde,” the king—Tobias, but Adetta is not on the first name basis with him—stands up from his place, and moves to clasp her father’s hand. It’s familiar thing. Friendly. Two school friends, lagged with life and responsibilities, seeing each other after a while.

“Your Grace,” Crawforde bows his head, and the king laughs.

“Please, we’re not in public,” he says. “Unless you’ve already forgotten your best friend’s name?”

“…Tobias,” Crawforde sighs. “It’s good to see you again. I wish it were in kinder circumstances.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Penelope sniffs, moving to embrace the queen—Scarlett—with casual familiarity. “I visit the capital every once few weeks.”

“You are not lagged with piles upon piles of paperwork, dear,” Crawforde chides, and she just laughs.

“Now, Scarlett, I didn’t think it would be so soon, but here are my children,” Penelope grabs Scarlett by the hand and leads the amused queen before Adetta. “Adelia, Rosalie and Elijah.”

Adetta curtsies gracefully. Rosaria tries to and almost trips, and Elijah doesn’t, because he’s busy catching her. The women both laugh.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Your Grace,” Adetta says respectfully.

“None of that, young one,” Scarlett waves her hand. “I would have been your godmother, hadn’t it had the potential to cause a political upheaval. Just call me Aunt Scarlett. All three of you.”

Elijah stammers, face red, but Adetta has dropped all the pretences instantly. Crawforde looks at her, and there’s resignation in his eyes, because he sees what’s coming next already.

“Does it mean that we’re also allowed to refer to His Grace as uncle?” she asks, innocently. She’s only eight, after all.

Crawforde groans, hiding his face in his hands, and Scarlett laughs.

“Of course,” Tobias says indulgently, and Adetta smiles at him. She rarely does so, and usually only towards the people who really deserve it, but Tobias is the king of the nation. He casually pats her head, and turns to Shelor. “And who might you be?”

“Shelor Alytharion, Your Grace,” Shelor says with a shallow bow. “Third Prince of Ifa Nalore. Currently, I’m the guest in Bellville Archduchy after they have saved my life.”

Tobias looks at the elf, then at Crawforde, and back at the elf. Shelor, curiously, is looking everywhere **but** Scarlett and Penelope’s general direction.

“So the claims of Elves are true then?” Tobias asks. “That you were attacked on Sheothia’s grounds?”

“Yes,” Shelor says easily. “However, I assure you, my assailants were not human. Or Sheothian for that matter.”

Adetta’s head snaps to the blonde and away from Scarlett cooing at her before she can even process that she wants to, gears turning. So somebody did attempt to assassinate him, knowing full-well that Ifa Nalore would hold Sheothia responsible. (Scarlett just turns her attention to Rosaria.)

“You mean to say that someone is trying to provoke a war?” she blurts out. He looks at her and smiles sadly. Why are they only learning this now? Well, it’s not their business, that’s why, but still-

Ugh.

“I am terribly sorry that a family squabble nearly threw your country into a turmoil. Worry not, it **will** be dealt with,” he reassures.

“So you’re here to help us settle the envoys?” Tobias asks, pointing at one of the chairs in the office. Shelor, out of breath and pale, sits down gratefully. He’s been recovering well, but he lost a lot of blood, and it would take his blood cells—the actual thing he needed to properly function—around two more months to recover fully. Until then, he’d have to rely on others.

“Settle them? Not really. Yell at them and send them back to my mother? Yes.”

Adetta knew there was a reason she liked him.

“So, you ending up in the woods, bleeding all over and ripe for my daughter to stumble upon was someone’s plan,” Crawforde says. It wasn’t something they asked for before, and Shelor himself seemed rather concern-free.

“Indeed. Alas, as I said, it will be dealt with. I apologize for the issue, however.”

“Ah, it’s fine,” Tobias waves his hand. “When are the envoys due to arrive?”

“Few hours,” Scarlett answers. “By dinnertime, I suppose. No matter, they will be here when they will, and we’ll take care of them then. For now, I would like to introduce the children. What say you, Penny?”

“Well, Adetta might end up punching Alastair if he behaves how you told me he does,” Panalope sighs. “But, I suppose.”

“Adetta, you’re not allowed to punch the prince,” Crawforde says almost instantly, and she rolls her eyes.

“I swear I will not,” she says, and there’s relief creeping in her father’s eyes. “Unprovoked, that is. If he pokes a wasp nest, it’s only fair he gets stung, no?”

Crawforde hides his face in his hands, and Tobias laughs.

“And who might you be?” Scarlett asks, as her eyes finally land on Fenrir. He came too, mainly because he was part of the group that stumbled upon Shelot. The boy blushes and bows down.

“Fenrir Grimm, Y-Your Grace,” he stammers. “I-I’m Lady Adetta’s servant.”

“My, my,” Scarlett coos, and pats his head like one would a puppy. She wants to say something more, but the second her hand comes in contact with his head, something flashes in her eyes, and shadows seem to shift. Scarlett smiles. “Oh, you’re an _interesting_ one,” she says, and Adetta looks between her and Fenrir with confusion and worry.

“Is- Is something wrong, Your Grace?” Fenrir asks, but the queen shakes her head.

“No, not at all,” she tells him, and turns to Penelope with a smile. “He’s the fourth I know of, at least within Sheothia.”

“Fourth what?” Adetta asks, but both women just smile.

“That’s very fortunate, actually,” Penelope says. “I had my suspicions, but confirmation is also very good thing to have.”

“You’re very fortunate having one in your daughter’s vicinity,” Scarlet says, to Adetta’s growing confusion. Fenrir whimpers, and half hides behind her. Elijah and Rosaria moved to Shelor the moment they realized that they aren’t likely to understand a thing from the conversation.

“What. Mother, tell me!” Adetta says in a way that’s almost bratty whining. Penelope laughs.

“You’ll know when it’s time for you to know,” the woman laughs. “But you’re very fortunate to have found Fenrir indeed.”

Adetta just sighs, shakes her head and shrugs, because whatever. If Penelope says she’ll eventually figure it out, she will, and it’s no use asking now. Neither of the women is the type to divulge information—no, they’d much rather make it a big, scary secret and watch their victim squirm.

Adetta never gives her mother the satisfaction, shrugging off the secrets until it’s time for her to learn them. It’s not use, after all, to occupy her mind with a puzzle she won’t solve unless she’s given the pieces, and so, she’ll just patiently wait for the pieces.

She has three secrets now; her family in general, and the elves’ attitude towards them, Shelor’s family drama (?) that lead to his attempted (or successful, depending on timeline) assassination, and now this—whatever it is, surrounding Fenrir.

If she kept thinking about those, she’d probably eat her sleeves in frustration.

(Why couldn’t [Regalis] developers just have put in a bit more work into their worldbuilding? Then she would have arrived here already armed with answers to first two problems. The third she couldn’t even be mad at not knowing, as she was fairly certain that Fenrir was dead in the Original Timeline.)


	9. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Beta'd for you by Karp!
> 
> Today's warnings; fantasy racism, a kid being a mean little shit, and an eight-year-old punching another eight-year-old square in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the shitstorm that went down last month. It was ugly, and the messages pertaining to it are gone now. In short, I got riled up and reacted in a ture me fashion, with an explosion, and got my shit handed to me for it. Eh. Let's not talk about it.

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter six•

_Girl visits the gardens. Girl punches the prince. Girl meets the princess._

•••

Before long, Scarlett offers the children to go to the gardens while the adults catch up, and while Adetta would much prefer to just snag a book from one of the shelves in the office and cram herself into one of the corners with it, she is also fully and well aware that leaving the children without supervision in palace gardens spanning literal acres is literally asking for trouble. As much as she would like to believe in Elijah and Rosaria, they were small children, and she knew from firsthand experience that small children oftentimes came up with most ridiculous and most dangerous ideas, due to their severe lack of concept of danger.

And no, leaving a maid with them is not an option, as they won’t go against orders, even ridiculous ones from children. Adetta is the only one who can really reign them in.

“Alastair and Chantal should be somewhere there, so go introduce yourselves,” Scarlett smiles, eyes twinkling, and Adetta sends her a suspicious glance. She remembers that in game, younger Alastair used to be a Joffrey-worthy little shit, and Scarlett of all people would know that Adetta would not stand to that behavior.

Was the queen staging a confrontation between Adetta and Alastair on purpose? She did warn them of such possibility and neither Tobias nor Scarlett seemed overly concerned.

Did they actually want Adetta to literally beat some sense into their son, if it actually came to physical blows?

Oh well. One way to find out.

Crawforde sends her a sour face as they leave, silently pleading that she does not, in fact, go after the prince, and she just shrugs, and mouths ‘I always just react accordingly’. If anyone will be to blame today, it will be Alastair only, and they all better know it.

♦►☼◄♦

The palace gardens were an actual, literal plant maze of which size overshadowed those at Bellville Manor, and the splendor overshadowed it. But there was a wild charm to those back home, as if a piece of forest, sequestered and subjected to only minimal human influence—paved paths, lamp-posts, and benches, and then just nature—that could not be found here, among the perfectly trimmed hedge fences and flowers planted in fancy shapes, perfectly outlined little ponds and small fencings. Bellville’s Garden was, in a way, a jungle, a wonderland full of secrets and secret paths. The Secret Garden that was not secret at all, if you knew where to look.

The Palace Gardens, on the other hand, were a pinnacle of geometry and human effort. Each was beautiful, but with entirely different charm, and Adetta found that, while she enjoyed this man-made thing quite a bit, it couldn’t really hold a candle to the barely-touched wilderness surrounding her home.

Rosaria is looking around with a bright smile, probably moments away from running off, and Adetta moves a bit closer to grab her by the scruff if needed. Thankfully, it’s not needed, because Rosaria grabs her by the hand and starts jumping around.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s gooooo!” the girl almost yells, and Adetta lets herself be tugged along with a small smile.

“Rosaria, slow down a little!” Elijah complains, but it falls on deaf ears. Adetta manages to slow her sister down a little, of course, but not by much. Just enough that she has no trouble keeping up at a relatively slow pace.

“How should we even act with the Prince?” Elijah asks. “I mean, His Highness and Her Highness asked us to refer to them casually, so I don’t know-“

“Whatever will be fine, I suppose,” Adetta says. “From what I gathered, he didn’t have much contact with kids his age before, so just act with him like you would with any other child. Aunt won’t mind.”

“Easy for you to say!” Elijah whines. “You always do whatever you want anyway! Sometimes I feel like there’s no force that could stop you.”

“That’s good,” she says with a small smile, and that’s that.

They wander around the gardens, a bit aimlessly, mostly lead around by Rosaria and Fenrir jumping from plant to plant and talking botany in simplified child terms, and Adetta just enjoys being outside. Of course, she would prefer to be somewhere inside, with a book and peace, and the sun irritated her, but otherwise, it was fine. Elijah was picking singular flowers from the perfectly trimmed flowerbeds and slowly folding them into a wreath. When he seemed satisfied with it, he unceremoniously plopped it on Adetta’s head.

“Ah!” Rosaria calls out. “Sis, you look like a flower fairy!”

“Do I really?” she asks with a small smile.

“I mean,” Fenrir says, blushing a bit, “you do kind-of look like a fairy all the time.”

“Yep!” Elijah agrees. “With your violet hair and pink eyes, you’re only really missing wings!”

Rosaria is nodding at them so hard Adetta for a moment worries for her neck, but she just smiles and humors them, twirling a little. Her hair is long, straight for the most part and ending in separate ringlets, and it whips around her in an arc, guided by a small gust of wind. Rosaria giggles and claps her hands.

But the world wouldn’t have that—and, of course, the moment gets ruined.

“What’s the yelling about?” a snobby voice of young boy rings through the pathway. “Who are you even? Why are you allowed in the Royal Gardens?!”

Before them, in his full eight-year-old glory, stands Alastair, red hair still short, and yellow eyes shining with about as much contempt as a child can muster. A brat spotted, Adetta’s mind sings, and indeed, Alastair seems very much a brat, from his pose through his tone, look in his eyes, to his general disposition.

Adetta kind-of hates him already.

“Auntie Scarlett told us to go here,” Adetta replies curtly, and Alastair grits his teeth.

“Auntie- How dare you to speak of Mother as such! You plebs should know your place!”

One simple sentence, and Adetta has to physically grab Elijah and Fenrir to stop them from potentially committing murder. Is this really Alastair? The same sad but friendly young man from the game, with bright smile hiding a metric ton of pain and smug, boisterous glint to his eye?

Well, it obviously is him. Just—in every way inferior.

“We know our place,” she says icily, and Eliah blanches, and Fenrir flattens his ears against his skull.

“Do you now?” he sniffs, before looking at Fenrir. Adetta does not like his gaze. “Hah, bringing filthy animal here-“

“Fenrir is neither filthy nor animal, and behaved much better than you, therefore I fail to see how should he have less of a right to be here than you,” Adetta says through gritted teeth, knuckles white as she’s gripping her boys’ collars, now more to ground herself than them.

Alastair scoffs. “I am Alastair Sinclair, the Prince of Sheothia! I can say and do whatever I please!”

Oh, lording titles over others.

Fun.

“I am Adelia Bellville, and I don’t have to give a single flying fuck over what you can do,” she tells him, tone even but with an edge to it that makes Elijah and Fenrir flinch, and Alastair loose some of his bravado. Rosaria is standing behind her, smarter than throwing herself at the bigger, older boy, but shivering with gleeful anticipation, because she knows her sister, and she knows exactly what will happen soon, and she cannot wait.

“I- I’ll call the guards to get rid of you! And that mutt!”

This is the lovable capture target of Regalis? Really? This little, Joffrey-worthy shit?

Adetta lets go of her servant and cousin, and takes few steps forward.

“If you truly know what’s good for you, you will apologize to Fenrir first, and then to us,” she informs the other eight-year-old flatly, still disbelieving at how such a small child can be such a shit in even semi-public. But then, from what Adetta heard from her parents, the Royal Couple is insanely busy, which means that Alastair is cared form mostly by people who bend backwards to please him.

Alastair must have never once been denied in his life, and it shows.

“I will not apologize to this lowly thing!” he shrieks, stomping his foot. “It’s less than human and I want it gone!” He spits in Fenrir’s direction.

Adetta clenches her fists, blood boiling, and if gaze alone could kill, Alastair would be dead by now. But it can’t, sadly, so she has to do it manually.

She moves towards him, purposeful, fast, long strides, and Alastair, pulled by some shred of self-preservation, takes a step back.

“What are you doing? I’m the prince! I order you to stay away from me!”

Adetta doesn’t answer. Instead, she raises her fisted hand up, rears it back, and delivers one of the most satisfying right hooks in her life, straight in the center of his face with as much force as her eight-year-old body can muster. Alastair falls onto the ground and Rosaria cheers loudly, and there are quick steps towards her, and suddenly Elijah is in her face, frantically looking over her hand.

“Are your knuckles okay? That looked nasty!”

Prioritizing his sister’s hand rather than the nation’s prince writhing on the floor after getting punched with that very hand. Adetta is glad he’s got his priorities straight.

“Your highness!” a woman screams, and there’s sound of shoes on the pavement, adults judging from the intensity, and a maid rounds the hedge corner, and stops, frozen in her tracks, looking between Alastair on the ground, nose bleeding, and Adetta attending over him with clenched first still raised and perfectly natural expression.

“Good morning to you,” Adetta curtsies politely at the stupefied maid and some guards. “I am Adelia Henrietta Bellville. Auntie Scarlett told us to come to the gardens as she and Uncle Tobias talk to our parents.”

There’s confusion on their faces, followed quickly enough by a horrified realization.

The Heiress Apparent of Bellville Archduchy just punched the First Prince of Sheothia. A squabble of two children in the gardens, and yet, a stand-off between two titans on, by all means, equal footing.

“What are you waiting for?!” Alastair shrieks from the ground. “Throw them in the dungeon!”

“They can’t, you dumbfuck,” Adetta snaps at him, and only barely stops herself from kicking the brat. She massages her forehead briefly as Alastair splutters, and then moves over to him, bends gown, and hauls the boy up by the scruff, despite his flailing. “Get blood on my dress and I’ll have Uncle Tobias tan your hide,” she snaps in warning, and he stills, looking at her wide-eyed. She had punched him already—maybe she can really make his father do that?

Adetta just scoffs, and bodily drags Alastair in the direction the flustered maid and guards came from.

“Is there any ice you can bring me?” Adetta asks the maid directly, spooking her. The woman jumps a bit, but the nods, a tad frantically. “Good. Bring me a bowl of it then.”

“What do you need ice for?” Elijah asks, as the maid all but sprints away.

“To throw it behind your collar,” Adetta says, and he gives her a deadpan but slightly afraid look. He knows it’s just a her-thing to say things like these, but it’s also a her-thing to actually carry them through. “No, I bloodied this idiot’s nose, the least I can do is ice it, right?”

She shakes Alastair for emphasis, much to the boy’s dismay, but he’s busy whining and holding his nose.

“He deserves to bleed,” Rosaria says resolutely, trotting behind them, hand-in-hand with Fenrir.

“Well, yes, but I choose to be the bigger person,” Adetta tells her little sister. “Lording my emotional and general superiority over a lesser being and such.”

“Ah. Makes sense.”

“Once my mother hears of this-“ Alastair starts, but Adetta cuts him off with a snort.

“Your mother is the one who explicitly allowed me to punch you,” she tells the prince. “I sincerely doubt she’ll do much more than laugh at your expense.”

“She would never!” he argues, but that gets blood into his mouth, and he proceeds to spit, disgusted.

“Would she?” Adetta asks, amused. “Because she’s very alike my mother, and my mother **would**.”

Alastair falls silent, his body still finding it in itself to blush, in fury or embarrassment or both, despite the blood loss. Not like the blood is gushing from his nose anyway, it’s more like a trickle—she absolutely didn’t manage to break it or anything, not with a strength of an eight-year-old. Maybe later in life she would be able to throw punches like such, but not with child’s body.

They soon come upon a medium-sized, heavily ornate gazebo with a set table and, by the table, another familiar-unfamiliar face. It would appear that Alastair was having tea with his sister.

And a horde of staff, all of whom collectively flinched when Adetta came in, dragging Alastair, who was bleeding from his nose, by the collar. There was a bruise forming around his nose already, angry red that will undoubtedly turn uglier purple come tomorrow.

The princess’ eyes twinkle with mischief when she sees them. She’s six, or something like that, and a spitting image of her mother, that childish mischief bound to mature into adult smugness included. She stands up, because she has much more manners than her brother, and curtsies cutely.

“Greetings to you all, I am Chantal Rose Sinclair, the First Princess of Sheothia.”

“Well met Your Grace,” Adetta curtsies back, which is broken a bit due to her still having a fistful of Alastair’s shirt. “I am Adelia Henrietta Bellville, the First Daughter and Heiress of Bellville Archduchy.”

Rosaria and Elijah introduce themselves, too, and after some nudging, so does Fenrir. They all ignore Alastair’s grumbling.

“Now that know who everyone is, what did this idiot do this time?” Chantal asks, two years younger but very much with the exasperation of an older sibling.

“I have been violently attacked!” Alastair shrieks, and Adetta can feel a vein on her neck pop.

“You have insulted me and my friends, and then suffered the consequences thereof, like every normal person!” she snaps at him, and he scoffs. He’s still holding his nose, which is still bleeding, and Adetta still has him by the scruff, so the effect is probably nothing like he intended.

“I am the prince!”

“And your sister is the princess, and, somehow, she can behave like a person, instead of screaming like an ape,” Adetta deadpans. “I wonder why.”

“I will have you executed for this!”

“You’re eight, you don’t have nearly enough power to do that. You wouldn’t even if you were a king, due to my standing! I, on the other hand, have all the power necessary to throw you into that rosebush, and half a mind to actually do it!” she says, obviously agitated, and marches Alastair to the table, forcefully sitting him down. “Now let me look at your nose.”

“That’s your fault to begin with!”

“No. That’s my response to you being a racist little bitch,” Alastair’s eyes widen at her language, and Chantal lets out a surprised snort. Elijah shakes his head, Fenrir chuckles, and Rosaria cheers. Adetta only curses when she’s agitated, after all. “Now sit the fuck down and stop fucking squirming, or I’ll make it worse!”

Alastair stops squirming as Adetta moves him to sit, leaning forward and pinching his nose, which she deems not-broken. It will swell, though, and it will hurt for a good week.

“I could fix him,” Elijah proposes, and Adetta snorts.

“I doubt anything but a life-changing event could fix his abhorrent personality,” she says.

“I- You- His nose! I meant his nose!” Elijah splutters, and she laughs at the boy. He huffs, but there’s a smile on his face.

“He deserves to suffer,” Rosaria says sagely, with all the seriousness a three-year-old could possibly muster, from where she managed to become seated and sipping tea in the short span since their arrival. Adetta sends her a questioning glance. “He insulted you and Fenrir,” the girl says as if it explains everything and, to Rosaria, it very much does. Actually, to Adetta, it does too.

“Well, my brother **is** an idiot,” Chantal agrees with a nod, and proceeds to take a sip of her tea. Alastair hisses from where he’s seated and finally, the harried maid from before comes running with a bowl of ice. Adetta proceeds to grab a handful of ice shards, wrapping them in one of the silky handkerchiefs and pressing the wrapping to Alastair’s nose. He hisses and almost rears back, but she’s faster and grabs him by the back of the neck to prevent any rapid movements.

“Down. Ice helps.”

“Shut up, I hate you.”

“Eh, I’ll live.”

“Why won’t you just bow down to be like everyone else?!”

“Because you’re a little brat in desperate need of manners.”

“You’re same age as me!”

“So?”

“So?! You, why you-!”

Adetta presses the icepack harder.

♦►☼◄♦

Scarlett is standing by one of the windows in the hallway, the one overlooking the gardens. She’s smiling, Penelope notes, her gaze set somewhere father than the windows and hedges allow them to see, and eyes somewhat glazed.

“I always wondered, why wouldn’t you just reign in that boy?” she asks her friend, and Scarlett turns to her, eyes deglazing, and smiles.

“Because the most valuable lessons are those we learn for ourselves,” she says. “Alastair will grow up to be a magnificent young man and a great ruler one day, but not before he goes through some hardships. What they are, however, I can’t say anymore.”

“You felt something,” Penelope says, eyes narrowing. “Didn’t you?”

“The world has shifted, Penny. It’s been shifting for years—ever since you had Adetta, but recently, less than a year ago, any semblance of set future has went to hell. And it’s all your kids fault, Penny. I don’t know what Adetta knows, or what will she do, but… Your mother will be pleased with her, that much I know. Mine will be as well, for that matter.”

“Oh yes,” Penelope laughs. “I don’t know when they will meet, but they will, and Adetta is exactly the type of person Mama adores. I almost fear what will happen then.”

They stand in companionable silence for a while. Then;

“She punched him, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Does it make me a bad mother that I find it entertaining?”

“Well… You did say he has to face hardships. An angry Adetta is a hardship enough, for now.”


	10. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi it's me and I'm alive.
> 
> Chapter Bata'd by Karp.
> 
> Today's warnings: More mystery and stuck-up elves.

**[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]**

****

•chapter seven•

_Girl has a serious talk. Girl gets a magic tutor. Girl terrorizes the elves._

•••

* * *

“You really didn’t have to go with me,” Penelope says, as she and Scarlett walk at a relatively fast pace towards the tall white tower. It was massive, shooting up the sky above even the palace, seemingly build from painstakingly placed white bricks, with glittering windows and ivy climbing up the outer walls. It was the Magetower, and it was a library and center of all knowledge and research in Sheothia, not only magical. It was built by the first prominent Mages in the country, hence its name, and is the seat of the Archmage, as well as the housing unit of various Magi and people of science from all over the country, and beyond.

It was also where Penelope’s person of interest lived—her tutor of choice for Adetta. Since they were in the Capital, the Archduchess saw no harm in personally contacting the Magi, and maybe arranging a meeting with Adetta so that they could feel one another out and decide on the best course of the magic tutoring. That, or preferably just hire them fully. With Adetta’s magic awakening more and more, a feat relatively rare among children under ten years old, it was only a matter of time before she lost control of her wild magic and caused an accident, therefore learning control with a trained professional was crucial and couldn’t wait as long as Adetta initially waited.

She would understand, and Penelope had a distinct feeling that she would also appreciate it. Adetta was always a bit more interested in magic than in other things.

“But I want to,” Scarlett says, bringing Penelope out of her thoughts, “also, despite living in Capital, I see Ethel less than I see you. We’re both just so busy and our schedules hardly ever align at all. Only now I have some free time as all we’re doing is waiting for the elves.”

“I thought you weren’t overly fond of one another? And I didn’t hear anything of that changing.”

“Understatement of a century,” Scarlett snorts. “But that was fifteen years ago at the Academy, and we’re all adults now. I mean… I still don’t actually like Ethel, but I tolerate her. Honestly, of our friend group from Academy only four people other than I turned out well, but the rest of them?”

“They called us bastard sisters, do you remember? Nobodies from nowhere, upstarts, all the names, all the ridicule. And look at them now, writhing at our feet, begging for favors—‘for old times’ sake, Penny, you were such a great friend’, and conveniently forget all the torn dresses and venomous words. Oh how I love how their faces contort and all the excuses they come up with when I recount all of their little sins—‘for old times’ sake, my friend,’” Penelope chuckles, delightfully cruel, and Scarlett can’t help but agree.

“If only they knew where those nobodies from nowhere actually came from. Do you think that bitch, Iola, would turn any paler than when Tobias proposed to me?” Scarlett asks wistfully. “If she knew who my mother actually is. And yours. They would probably be more scared of yours, really.”

“Heart attack on the spot, no doubt!” Penelope laughs. “But alas, they can’t all be like elves, and know.”

“Elves don’t know, elves remember. Ethel knows.”

“Of course Ethel knows, you’re almost-related!”

“Yes, and therefore I’m coming with, Penny. She’s more likely to listen to us both than just you. For old times’ sake.”

“And also…” Penelope looks at Scarlett knowingly.

“Fine, fine, you nagging goose!” Scarlett snaps. “Ethel has a boy our children’s age, and throwing the mini-archmage in the making straight into Adetta’s social group will do him as much good as it will Adetta and Alastair’s standing with the mages!”

Penelope laughs as they enter the Magetower.

♦►☼◄♦

Shelor finds them eventually, down in the gardens, walking languidly among the verdant, trimmed greenery. He walks slowly and stops every once in a while when the lower amount of red blood cells fail to circulate oxygen quick enough through his body and he loses his breath, but he stays on his feet, and Adetta contemplates the wisdom of leaving him to walk all on his own without a person to catch him. He probably insisted, she figured—Shelor may have been half-dead for the past week, and not particularly keen on doing anything than eating and sleeping through his severe blood loss, but he made it rather clear that he was a stubborn bastard to boot.

He takes a look at Alastair, blood on his chin and icepack on his nose, and snorts, and the princeling makes an offended noise, but the elf doesn’t seem to quite care. Instead, he turns to Adetta.

“Adelia, would you accompany me for a bit?” he asks, even if it’s obvious he’s straining to stand. Adetta blinks for a second, because he’s calling her by her actual name and that’s been making her confused for the past week, but after a moment she just sighs and stands up.

“Let’s find somewhere to sit, okay?” she asks, and he nods, a tad strained. As a trained elf ranger, he’s significantly stronger than a regular human, but anemia is a bitch. “Elijah, Fenrir, don’t murder the prince without me to watch.”

She’s rewarded with an indignant ‘hey!’ which she promptly ignores, following the elf at the pace she can easily keep up even with the length disparity between their strides. Shelor was getting better, sure, but it was definitely slower-going than what Adetta, still used to twenty-first-century medicine, would have liked to see.

They eventually find a nice patch of grass under a tree, and sit down without much preamble.

“The elves will try stirring something,” Shelor tells her, and Adetta can’t help but appreciate his bluntness. Or the fact that he knows to treat her less like a child and more like an adult, something only Penelope did aside from him. Crawforde… Tried, but he still looked at Adetta and saw his eight-year-old child, so she supposed it was fine.

“Elaborate?” she prompts.

He does just that. “I was attacked by elves, on Sheothia’s grounds. I don’t even remember details of why we’re here in the first place, some scouting—we were mere miles from the border. And suddenly I have an arrow in my shoulder and in my gut. I should’ve figured it, really, but I suppose my mother is right to call me an arrogant moron. It would have gotten me killed, if not for you.”

“And you didn’t think to share it with us?”

“Not really, no. I was going to recuperate, return, have my mother deal with the dissenters and send you a sizable reward,” he sighs, scratching the back of his neck. “I did not expect the envoy to be sent—and so soon after I’ve been declared missing in action. It’s as if they were fully expecting to have me dead, to pin it on Sheothia and have a pretext to go to war.”

“Even if the arrows were obviously elven?”

“Not to diss my species, but elves are so convinced of their superiority, we’re not that good at plotting. It’s all pride and honor,” Shelor snorts. “Who could possibly accuse another elf of attempting to murder a prince? The gall!”

“And yet,” Adetta mutters wistfully.

“And yet, indeed,” Shelor sighs, swinging back to lie on the grass.

“Do you know who is it? You said it was a family squabble.”

That, and he wasn’t the only sibling. Adetta knew that.

“It’s not any of my siblings,” Shelor says with a chuckle, quirking an eyebrow at her. Adetta flushes—can he really blame her for the first most obvious conclusion?! “It was my cousin, if anyone.”

Ah. So she wasn’t that far off the mark after all.

“Why?”

“Because his mother is my mother’s elder sister, and they both never particularly hid the fact that they think they _deserve_ to rule Ifa Nalore, instead of my mother, who won the crown fair and square by proving herself more capable,” he says, spatting the word like a particularly vile curse.

“But why provoke a war?” Adetta asks. “Why provoke a war that would end with extremely severe loses from both sides? Just to destabilize the current ruler? Do they not care about their **people**?!”

The game didn’t mention a shift of power in Ifa Nalore during the war. Then again—the game cared about the elite school for mostly-aristocracy in Sheothia, and not at all Ifa Nalore.

Shelor looks at her sadly, and shakes his head.

“Greed for power and wealth is a common disease not exclusive to humans and dragons,” he says sadly. “Balinor thinks that being a prince is his birthright, and Eliyen thinks the crown is hers. They will take no for an answer, I’m afraid, and Ifa Nalore may burn, for all they care, as long as they get the throne. Or so I think, now. Before, it was merely harmless snide remarks.”

“Before they haven’t almost-successfully attempted to murder you,” Adetta mutters, furiously ripping at the perfectly-trimmed grass. All that war, fighting, death, famine, plague—all that death, her sister’s death, just to get a fancy tiara and some legislative power? Because they thought they deserved it?

She snarls, throwing a fistful of grass. It doesn’t fly far, before her wind magic surges with her anger and carries the trimmed blades father away.

“Some people just don’t care, as long as they get their way,” Shelor tells her sadly. “Some people just don’t care. Unlike you.”

Adetta blinks. “Me?”

“You may fool others, but you don’t fool me,” Shelor smirks. “Your whole family, in fact, are good people. Towns under Crawforde’s jurisdiction prosper fine and he never even thinks before investing money in them, and how mad he got at mistreatment of a child, too. Your mother is widely known for being the one behind funding a whole lot of orphanages, hospitals, and basic schools. And you—that seamstress you employ, the one you said you dragged from another province—you throw at her, for the dresses you want, that are cheaper and easier to make, the same ludicrous amount a person would pay for the elaborate contraptions the ‘upper crusts’ call _fashion_.”

The last word is uttered with such absolute, finite disgust, and Adetta is inclined to agree. Not to mention she could hear the quotation.

Shelor’s opinion of most Sheothian nobles is about as high as hers.

“Your point?” she asks.

“My aunt is a terrible bitch, and you’re a good person,” Shelor says with a shrug, which looks weird, as he’s lying on his back, on the grass. “And that not everybody can be a good person, their standing notwithstanding. You and her are of the same rank, if we compare our country structures.”

“Ah,” she says noncommittally. “Anything we should be wary of, otherwise?”

“Balinor is a crafty bastard who doesn’t know when to give up,” Shelor sighs. “He will try again. He will have a backup plan. He targeted Ifa Nalore’s royal family. He will not be above targeting Sheothia’s—especially the prince and the princess. He cares not for the legends and superstitions, he will not respect Scarlett’s blood.”

Adetta freezes.

Chantal’s accident. Even with Shelor’s death, it happened around this time. Could it be?

“Another future snippet?” Shelor asks, shaking Adetta out of her stupor, and she hums.

“Maybe.”

“No matter. And there’s also the idea of subjugating the lesser, human race,” he says, rolling his eyes at the very notion. Adetta snorts.

“Fantasy racism. How _lovely_ ,” she gags. “But what about your cousin and his mother? Are you going to expose them?”

“Of course,” Shelor sniffs. “Well, maybe it’s for the better the envoys are coming here. With so many people around, Balinor will be less likely to pull some crazy stunt, like trying to kill me again. No doubt one of my elder brothers will be there.”

“Oooh, you’re the baby of the family then?”

Shelor glares at her in a pointed manner that tells her everything about his littlest sibling complex.

(And god, she really became proficient in sibling-speak, hasn’t she?)

“Aww, poor widdle babie. Can’t relate, though, as the eldest sibling and all that.”

He throws grass at her.

“Real mature,” she sticks her tongue out at him.

Shelor scoffs. “Joke’s on you—I’m not actually an adult yet.”

“Wait, really?” she asks, wide-eyed.

“Yes. I’m eighty-nine. I won’t be an adult for eleven more years.”

Wait. Adetta is eight. People are considered adults in Sheothia at age of seventeen. Nine years from now. That means—

“Oh my god,” she whispers in a sort of horrified awe. “I will actually become adult before you.”

Shelor looks at her, eyes widening with the same sort of realization. “No.”

“Shelor, that-“

“No!”

“You’re a baby! I’m technically older than you!”

“No! Shut up! You’re eight! I shouldn’t have said anything!”

He hides his face in his hands, and Adetta just laughs.

♦►☼◄♦

“Okay, how do we do this? I’m assuming the elves don’t actually know you’re alive. Or found.”

“No. I was attacked by Balinor’s main lackeys—there’s a very high chance he is bringing them right to the Capital with him. With my brother there, taking care of them all won’t be hard.”

“So you’re going to burst in dramatically in the middle of the audience?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Main entrance or sneak in?”

“Main entrance might be a bit too much—the throne room is a bit big and pushing the big door open and then going all the way there? I’d be panting, and that’d not help me.”

“So we’ll sneak in from the side.”

“Yes… Wait, we?”

“Yeah. I don’t need to be there, and I don’t want to be there, but Eli, Fenrir, and I were the ones who found you, so. We’ll just sneak in after you’ve distracted the emissaries.”

“That… That holds merit. Yes, we’ll do that.”

♦►☼◄♦

When they return to the gazebo, it’s to a sight of Chantal excitedly talking with Rosaria and Fenrir while Elijah is reading a book he must have weaseled out of someone. The curious thing, however, s that Chantal and Rosaria aren’t sitting on chairs, but rather, on the back of a viciously cussing Alastair.

“He was being a meanie to Fen,” Rosaria explains. “So I told Eli to flip him like you showed us!”

Elijah all but pounces at Adetta the second she enters his range, hanging off of her arm and fidgeting, and she just pats his head in return. It was logical his anxiety would skyrocket in unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people, and she’s proud he managed to actually hold without running off to find her.

“Good job flipping the princeling,” Adetta compliments him, and he nods happily.

“It was either that, or Fenrir going at him with claws, and you said to wait for you for murder,” Elijah hums, and she chuckles. Alastair, who must have heard, looks at her wide-eyed.

Adetta grins.

♦►☼◄♦

“I cannot believe I’m actually agreeing to this—”

“You’re being paid for this,” Penelope reminds bemusedly.

“But—Penelope! I, the future Archmage, a live-in tutor of my former archnemesis’ best friend’s kid? Why did I agree to this? **How** did I agree to this? Gods have forsaken me. My hatred is just for show, now. Everybody will think that I’m—I’m friends with you, or something!”

“Oh, admit it, you actually love us,” Scarlett croons.

“Fuck you Scarlett! Were it not for the laws of this land, I would have blown your head straight off!”

“Now, now, children, cease your squabbling. Admit it Ethel, you’re interested in the children,” Penelope interjects before a catfight can break out.

“I—As much as I loathe to admit it, they have your insane aptitude for magic. Runs in the _family_ , after all. Except the boy… His aptitude for healing magic is, indeed, very interesting…”

“You know exactly where Adetta’s and Rosaria’s magic comes from, you remember my mother. And Scarlett’s mother—you met her personally, after all.”

“Like I could forget the crazy lady uncle Asher ran off with,” Ethel grumbles. Her favorite uncle! The gall, no matter _that woman’s_ true nature!

“Why do you hate me so? We’re family!” Scarlett bemoans.

“He was adopted. And you’re a bitch.”

“I’m a queen!”

“Never cared before, don’t see why I should now.”

“But you’ll tutor them?” Penelope presses.

“I agreed already, so give me my money and get out!” Ethel snaps. “I’ll be ready to go with you with Noah when you finally leave. Gods know this boy could use some actual friends.”

“Speaking from experience?” Scarlett smirks.

She gets a book thrown at her head for it.

“Get out of my office, you crazy half-bloods!”

♦►☼◄♦

Shelor was an asshole.

But that was okay. Adetta was an asshole too.

Frankly, only Crawforde raised complaints about their plans, and even that was purely because it seemed rude to him, and not because it was a bad idea or anything else. And now they—Shelor and the children, with only Fenrir on the lookout to call them in as needed—were hidden away in one of the side chambers, the ones with entrances hidden behind pillars lining the sides of the throne room, and no actual doors. There were quite a few nobles in the Throne Room, and Adetta wasn’t happy to be going out to be seen by them before her debut ball, but needs must, she supposed.

She hears the elves arrive, maybe even feels. There’s a shift in the air, and the tell-tale sound of opening door, and the hush of the furiously whispering nobles, and steps, but that’s not it.

There’s a sort of an aura that floods the throne room, one that’s eerily reminiscent of her mother’s at times but also completely different; of something old and graceful, and powerful. It’s exotic and it’s magical, but it lacks the danger- _lethal-flee- **NOW**_ touch her mother sometimes exudes with a soft, cheery smile when something isn’t quite to her liking.

And then there were demands and raised voices that, while muffled, Adetta could still hear. She didn’t catch every word, not even most, but the tone was very rude and accusatory.

“That’s Balinor,” Shelor says, wincing. “I can’t believe he just up and—He’s yelling at the ruler of another country! What the fuck!”

“I know right,” Adetta snorts, mussing her bangs in disbelief. “He’s really into provoking this war, isn’t he?”

“War?!” Elijah hisses in panic. Adetta pats his head.

“It’ll be fine. In a moment, we’re going out and yelling at him, and there will be no war.”

“Ah,” the boy says, tension slowly leaving his shoulders. “If you say so.”

If Adetta says so, it must be so. Honestly, his faith in her was amazing, and Adetta wished for some herself. Right now, she was fine, but she held no illusions that the moment she was out there, in public, she would be battling a sudden wave of stress and stage fright. It would be the first time she would be in any capacity in front of a crowd in this new life, but before, it was always like that.

She was always fine prior to an event, and then—stress.

“It’s time!” Fenrir bursts into the chamber, whisper-yelling. How on earth does he manage that, Adetta isn’t sure, but he does, and Shelor gets up, and moves to exit. He momentarily stops by Adetta as he passes her, and pats her head twice in reassurance. She takes a deep breath and follows, with Elijah and Fenrir in tow.

She feels her heartbeat go erratic the second she glimpses the gaggle of nobles gathered in the throne room, here with nothing else to do, having come to see the elves like some exotic animal in the circus. Some were even pointing at them.

The elves, of course, were all unfairly pretty. Tall, slim, almost lithe and whimsical, with all the stereotypical traits; facial features just a bit too pretty, eyes just a bit too bright, hair just a bit too lustrous to pass for a human. And, of course, the pointy ears—quite longer than that of human. Beautiful bastards, all of them.

Two men were at the forefront of the envoy; one was tall, with wavy, brown hair that barely reached past his chin—short, compared to others—and dressed in leather armor. The other was taller, with significantly paler skin and almost-black hair reaching his hips in a loose braid, and clad in green robes of a very… Stereotypically elvish cut, or so Adetta’s Tolkien-addled brain supplied.

“—and so now, third prince is gone, and as the obvious aggressors—” the short-haired one was speaking, but Adetta didn’t quite care, and neither did Shelor. He snorted, striding in like he wasn’t about to keel over from anemia. Maybe recovering this slow was elvish thing?

“How about I speak for myself, cousin?” Shelor asked, stunning the elves into silence. The tall one in a robe looked like he was about to burst crying upon seeing the blonde elf, while Balinor’ eyes slowly filled with indignance. He was not happy to see Shelor alive.

Two of the elves with them, Adetta noticed, paled significantly. Culprits; located.

“Brother!” the long-haired one sighs in obvious relief, and Shelor chuckles.

“I’m happy to see you too, Elisar,” he says, and the other elf wastes no time rushing over to embrace him, etiquette be damned.

Adetta looks between them, to focus on something that isn’t the nobles slowly noticing them. They look like night and day, truly—Shelor’s skin is dark, his hair is an ashen, pale blonde, and his eyes are a striking shade of purple. Elisar, on the other hand has very pale, almost glowing complexion, very dark brown hair, and warm, honey-colored eyes. On the first glance, the two look as unrelated as can be, but upon closer inspection, Adetta notices, their facial structure is incredibly similar to one another, almost the same.

“What happened?” Elisar asks, letting go, and Shelor, to Adetta’s horror, steps aside and points at her. Elisar takes one look at her, right into her pink eyes, pales even more, and looks back at Shelor in shock. To the side, Balinor scoffs, but the other elves shuffle nervously when Adetta inevitably turns her gaze at them.

The nobles, predictably, whisper, and she sways, feeling light-headed and dizzy, but Elijah’s hand is grounding, and to the outside she seems like a stoic doll, so everything is fine.

(She hates crowds, especially when most of them pay attention to her specifically.)

“What proof do we have that they have not put Prince under a mind-control?!” Balinor snaps suddenly, and Adetta realizes she must have dozed through half or more of an explanation. Not good, but probably nothing she hasn’t heard or done.

She looks around—Balinor is trying very hard not to panic, while the two elves she singled out before are straight-up having meltdowns where they stand. They must be really regretting coming out in public right this very moment. Shelor, at least, is kind enough to not to call them out in front of the nobles.

Adetta sighs, trotting over to the Elisar worriedly hovering to the side, as the two argued. She tugs at his sleeve and, upon getting his attention, motions him to bow so that she can whisper to him.

“Don’t act alarmed, but Shelor was attacked on Sheothia’s grounds,” she says, and Elisar’s eyes narrow. “But he was attacked by elves. He confirmed himself that Balinor staged it, and those two lackeys over there, panicking—they’re the ones who did it. Keep an eye on them.”

She looks at him steadily, face set, and he looks right back, for once holding her gaze, searching.

“What’s your game?” he whispers eventually, and Adetta cocks her head in confusion.

“The war, I suppose,” she answers eventually. “It would be incredibly bothersome if it happened,” she says, attempting to not to feel to bothered by Elisar’s cryptic question, superstitious and careful. Connected to her supposed heritage, she concludes.

Elisar nods, seemingly satisfied with her answer. “It would then appear that Balinor’s plan of public audience is backfiring rather spectacularly.”

“Oh, haven’t you noticed?” Adetta giggles. “He’s on a verge of panic attack. And I’ve grown a bit attached to Shelor so, honestly, I don’t feel the slightest bit bad for him.”

Elisar hums noncommittally. “I suppose my little brother has always been lucky.”

 _Not in the original game he wasn’t_ , Adetta thinks but doesn’t say. _But I’m glad he is here_.

♦►☼◄♦

Eventually, Tobias notices Balinor’s deteriorating state and the nobles increasing whispers, and unceremoniously kicks them out, inviting the guests to his personal study to resolve the issue once and for all.

Adetta all but collapses the moment they leave the throne room, very glad that they didn’t actually have to speak and kind-of mad she even went out there to begin with. Her legs feel like jelly, and her stomach is doing some wildly unpleasant flips.

“Elijah, can you carry me?” she asks, not even trying to stop her hands from shaking. “I think I may be about to faint. I hate crowd attention so much.”

“Ah… Alright,” Elijah says and, with Fenrir’s help, Adetta climbs onto his back. It takes some tension off of her, and is kind of a reverse of Elijah’s first night in the mansion, when the storm happened. It’s nice to know she can rely on him back.

“I could have carried you,” Fenrir huffs unhappily, but Adetta merely reaches over to pat his head.

“I’ll let you carry me once you’re bigger, okay?” she tells him, and he brightens.

“Promise?”

“Mhm. Walking is bothersome.”

“You walk everywhere anyways,” Elijah says.

“I do a lot of bothersome things. Like breathing. Talking. Wearing dresses. Life is so bothersome…”

“Well, if you want, you could just stay in bed and we’d bring you food and all!” Fenrir proposes.

“But then I’d get fat, and I’d be bored all the time,” Adetta complains. “You need to do bothersome things to get on with your life. It’s how life works. That’s why I hate it. But I gotta do it.”

“That sounds… Well, bothersome,” Elijah says lamely, and Adetta snorts into his shoulder.

“I know. It sucks. But it’s fine, too. You can do whatever you want, as long as you own up to it. But the consequences of doing some things aren’t worth it. So just don’t bother with some things.”

“Like what?” Shelor asks from wherever he was lurking, walking next to them.

“Like trying to murder your cousin and provoke a war because you want a fancy fucking chair you won’t even be able to use properly,” she scoffs. “God, some people are idiots.”

Shelor laughs. “But we caught him.”

“Yeah,” Adetta scrunches her face. “Just a hunch, but I think your bitch-cousin will cause trouble again. He’s the type.”

Shelor hums in agreement.

♦►☼◄♦

Exposing Balinor and his lackeys is laughably easy, in the end, and very cliché, in a shojo-isekai-game way that Adetta is now stuck in, where the love interest exposes his ‘evil fiancee’. Except now it’s Shelor exposing Balinor for trying to murder him, and Balinor and his lackeys getting tied up.

It’s quick, it’s anticlimactic, and Balinor is a whiny little bitch. Adetta doesn’t care.

“Um, are you going to be getting off soon?” Elijah asks.

“No. I’m acting spoiled today. You were fine with the crowds, I almost puked. And fainted.”

“I can carry you!” Fenrir steps in eagerly. Elijah looks at him.

“Actually, I don’t mind carrying you longer,” the boy amends quickly, causing Fenrir to glare. Adetta snorts into his shoulder.

For now, things were good.


End file.
